Cobalt Core is a sci-fi themed roguelike deckbuilder, developed by Rocket Rat Games (the team behind Sunshine Heavy Industries) and published by Brace Yourself Games (who also published Crypt Of The Necrodancer). It released for PC and Nintendo Switch on November 8, 2023.
A secret project to restore a powerful ship called the Cobalt has gone wrong, its core destabilizing and causing a rift in space and time. Even worse, the crew responsible for this mess, and the only ones capable of fixing it, had their memories fractured. They must now journey through sectors of space, fighting space pirates, killer robots, and other dangers on their mission to escape from the loop they're trapped in.
Tropes appearing in this Video Game include:
- 100% Completion: The game keeps track of every artifact and card you've obtained, every unique event and opponent you've encountered, and every possible combination of characters to win a run with (plus the hardest difficulty you've beaten with each combination).
- Above Good and Evil: Discussed and Averted. Drake assumes this is at play and even mocks the singularity for its willingness to save her despite her being a generally unpleasant person, only to be bluntly informed that they would be more than happy to leave her stranded in the time loop if that were in any way feasible.
- Animal Theme Naming: The majority of the various drone fighters the crew encounters are named after different animals and insects. Many of these names also hint at their respective combat styles.
- Artificial Limbs: The crew's drone specialist, Isaac, is a goat with an arm and a horn replaced by hard light constructs.
- Call to Agriculture: Parodied; one conversation between Drake and Smiff reveals that she lost a Sidekick to this when he gave up the pirate life to become a farmer. Both treat this very seriously, discussing it with the same gravitas as though he had died.
- The Chosen One: Occasionally Invoked by Isaac. One of the many, many things he can name his drones is 'Chosen One'; whenever he does so, he announces that he's got high hopes for this one.
- Color-Coded Characters: Each crew member is associated with a different color, making it easy to tell at a glance which cards and artifacts belong to which member.
- Colourful Theme Naming: Two of the sectors you explore are named for different shades of blue, tying into how your ultimate goal is to reach the Cobalt Core.
- Conditioned to Accept Horror: Due to being trapped in the time loop for 517 iterations and counting, the crew tends to take a rather blasé attitude whenever bad things happen or even when it looks like a TPK is inevitable.
- Evil Twin: The boss of the second area is "Riggs?", a punk version of one of the main characters that seems to be her future self. It turns out she is indeed the "real" Riggs from the original timeline. Because she started the loop by stealing a shard of the time crystal core, she has been able to keep her memories and self completely intact through hundreds of loops.
- Face Death with Dignity: Being aware of the loop, crew members will occasionally indulge in this if a run is going poorly, Leaning on the Fourth Wall in the process:Crew Member #1: This run's scuffed.
Crew Member #2: See you next loop. - Foreshadowing: At the start of your first run, you're shown a boot-up sequence for CAT.exe, with a "0xF3" module failing to load correctly. This file comes up again later in banter between Max and CAT.exe, with the latter eventually figuring it out but keeping the details secret, and just promising that it's "something cool" she'll show him later. In the Future Memory, CAT.exe shows Max that the cool thing is the ability to completely control the Cobalt.
- Friendly Enemy: After a few runs, many of the enemies you go up against will become this, as your crew will start up some friendly banter with them.
- Friendly Neighborhood Vampire: Dracula himself may show up in your run. He's pretty friendly and will offer you a powerful Leech card, or two of them if you're willing to sacrifice a bit of your hull.
- Future Me Scares Me: Subverted. Riggs discovers that the best way to emotionally traumatize her evil time clone is to reveal their shared embarrassing past memories to the rest of the crew. Also, the clone is technically Riggs' past self.
- "Groundhog Day" Loop: The crew find themselves trapped in one, and seek to find a way to end it by stopping the rift caused by the Cobalt Core. While the game starts with "Loop #1", CAT.exe mentions it being their 517th while stopping an argument she had heard already!
- Heel–Face Turn: Downplayed. Drake is initially encountered as an enemy before she's unlocked, and her first core memory shows that she was a mercenary that plotted to steal the Cobalt for profit before the loops began. However, once she actually joins the crew, she only helps out of self-interest and makes no effort to hide that she's the Token Evil Teammate. In fact, even after being unlocked, she'll still appear as an enemy if she's not in your crew.
- I Call It "Vera": Isaac regularly names all of his drones, and will often proudly announce them as they're being launched. Though there are moments where he's clearly struggling a bit to come up with suitable monikers. This also appears to impact his level of attachment to individual drones; while he typically mourns their loss, he'll occasionally accept that they managed to do their job… or that he hadn't named them properly.
- Ignored Epiphany: One match against a space pirate starts with them musing on the Lost Technology they've seen still picking fights long after their creators have expired, and noting the futility of it all. They conclude by stating that, since they're already feeling bad because of it, robbing you won't make them feel any worse.
- Let's Fight Like Gentlemen: One potential enemy encounter is Sir Ratzo, an elderly rat wearing medieval knight armor that will challenge the crew to honorable duels in which neither side is allowed to attack the other's weak points.
- Loose Lips: Drake's first core memory shows that she learned about the secret Cobalt restoration project because Riggs blabbed about it during one of her delivery runs.
- Lost Technology: The Cobalt itself is an ancient ship of unknown origin.
- My God, What Have I Done?: The normally calm, cool and collected Max is horrified when he accidentally removes CAT.exe's personality core while attempting to access some mysterious files in her database.
- My Greatest Failure: Parodied in Peri's second core memory, which reveals that her overly serious demeanor and strict regulations were caused by, of all things, getting too excited on her fifth birthday and dropping her cake.
- Odd Name Out: Four of the five unlockable ships are named after Greek or Roman gods. The fifth one doesn't follow this naming convention in order to further emphasize how it differs from the others, being made out of wood rather than metal and themed after a pirate ship.
- One Last Job: Invoked by Drake when she convinced Riggs to help out in her plan to steal the Cobalt's time crystal.
- One-Steve Limit: Played With. There are two different enemies named Spike. After a while, Drake forces one of the Spikes to change their name. Though "Riggs" is suggested as an option, something your Riggs will protest if she's present at the time.
- Only Known by Their Nickname: The core memories show that Peri's full name is actually Hyperia, but in the present, she's exclusively referred to by the former.
- The Password Is Always "Swordfish": One pre-Final Boss dialogue has Max apologize to CAT.exe for cracking her password, peeking into her files, and accidentally messing with her personality core. CAT.exe forgives him, but is outraged upon learning that her password is "password123".
- Playful Hacker: Max is a hacker whose deck contributions allow him to mess with card costs, order, and exhaustion. His dialogue mostly consists of videogame references.
- Perspective Flip: In the "future memory" unlocked by witnessing all of the others, you play as CAT.exe piloting the Cobalt against all of the player ship models (plus Drake's ship, the Fireball, as well as the other Riggs' Dreadnought) in order to collect the whole crew and finally end the loops.
- The Power of Friendship:
- One possible exchange when a run isn't going well is for one of the crew members to invoke this, insisting they can still win with the power of friendship... before rapidly running out of steam and resigning themselves to another loop.
- Also invoked by name during the final run, and then used to shatter the space-time continuum. CAT.exe wants out of the time loop more than anyone else, but can't bear to leave without saving the crew she loves. The player's final turn starts with a hand full of useless situational cards from each crew member… along with her unique attack that deals damage equal to the number of card colors in hand.
- Production Throwback: Various characters from Sunshine Heavy Industries make appearances in Cobalt Core as NPCs in events that can upgrade the current spaceship model.
- Red Eyes, Take Warning: The various enemy AIs that you encounter all have glowing red eyes, and text to match.
- Science Wizard: Wizbo, a potential enemy encounter, is a skilled spaceship pirate that also dresses like a wizard with a robe and pointed hat, and can cast spells between turns to cause strange effects like temporarily vanishing a party member. His abilities are entirely technological in nature, but the crew's scientist graciously keeps quiet about it.
- Secret Character: At the start of the game, only three of the eight playable characters are available to participate in a run: Dizzy, Riggs, and Peri. Three are unlocked successively, and have their portrait and unlock conditions clearly stated on the selection menu: win one run to unlock Isaac, win with Isaac on the team to unlock Drake, and win with Drake on the team to unlock Max. The final two characters, Books and CAT.exe, are completely hidden at first, but can be unlocked by progressing through the overarching narrative.
- Space Pirates: A regular enemy. It doesn't help that the crew's path takes them straight through the lawless Sapphire Cluster.
- Theme Naming: When launching Jupiter drones, Isaac naturally tends to name them after the various moons of Jupiter. Though he'll slip a Jupiter Jr in there now and then.
- Unlockable Content: In addition to five Secret Characters, there are four alternative ships that must be unlocked by playing on harder difficulties, filling up enough of the codex, winning a certain amount of runs, or winning a run with a team that excludes the default crewmates.
- Virtual Sidekick: The crew has an AI assistant, CAT.exe, that's responsible for waking them up from cryosleep at the start of each run and guiding them to victory. She's also the secret eighth playable character.
- Wistful Amnesia:
- While it doesn't take much to remind the crew members that they're trapped in a time loop, not all of their memories are so easily restored.
- This also applies to the various other characters who have been caught in the loop. One exchange involves a space pirate asking the crew if they've been experiencing the same phenomenon, before concluding that they must somehow be involved with causing the problem and attacking them.
