Welcome to the fast-paced and reliable world of freight delivery and logistics, where you play poker. Wait, what? That can’t be right. *Thumbs through some pages.* Nope, you read correctly. Developer and publisher CDL Studios brings us Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics, a poker card game with a twist.

You play as Cosmo, a faceless space trucker. Cosmo also doesn’t come with any back story, so you get to make up who Cosmo is all for yourself. I imagined him as Sal from Futurama. After travelling along Interstellar 81, Cosmo pulls up at one of the asteroids and commences playing poker with the locals. If you want more story, yet again that is up to you to make up.

The gameplay of Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics is incredibly simplistic. The only depth incorporated into the game is introduced through cheats, and I’ll write more about that soon. You begin on an asteroid called Buzz’s Gazz, moving about in first-person view with the WASD keys, and looking with the mouse.

Interactions are all completed with the E key, and you can move faster by holding the Shift key, but the other keys, like Q for the torch, R to look at your cheat cards, and Tab to show you the objective information feel redundant. In a poker game, navigate with your mouse and click on the action you want, and these are all your standard poker actions of bet, raise, check, and fold, but there is one extra action listed – cheat.

I’m OK at poker, with my biggest flaw being not knowing which hand is better than another. Thankfully Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics will always select the highest winning hand for you. This is where the twist of Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics comes into play.

Rather than relying on lady luck on the draw of the cards, you can manipulate the situation with cheats. Cheats can be played at any time during a hand and vary with what they do. Some raise or lower the cards on the table, some raise or lower the cards in your hand, and some just completely change the cards on the table, just to name a handful.

Cosmo’s objective is to play poker and earn money so he can buy in on the higher stakes table. The more money you earn the more experience you gain as well. Once you have earned enough experience you can visit the Shady Guy and select more cheat cards or slots to hold more cheats.

If you do go bust and lose all your money, you can also ask the Shady Guy for money. He will give you the base buy-in amount so you can keep playing. Beyond that, there is little more to Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics other than to play poker.

There are a total of three asteroids and one space station, with the asteroids having three tables each and the space station only having one. Your opponents progressively get harder on the richer tables by obtaining cheats themselves.

Their cheats are always listed so you know what they do to win the game, be it starting with an Ace card or only requiring four cards to make a straight, it will have you utilising your cheats in different ways to get that winning hand. Reaching the space station is the goal so that you can enter the tournament. With a whopping ten million buy-in on the table, you will be playing and cheating at poker for a while.

Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics has a low poly cartoon-style look. Everything is sanded and polished to a shiny sheen, making it appear slippery and smooth in texture, so the models wouldn’t look out of place in the bobblehead section of a novelty store.

The country music that plays through the radio at the tables is fitting to the theme even though you’re in space. I mean, come on, honestly, what type of music do you expect Sal to listen to? The announcer fits in just as well with his country’s western vernacular, however, both the music and the announcer get repetitive very quickly. The sound effects are all serviceable, and from the shuffling of cards or the clinking of chips, nothing sounds out of place.

If you like poker, Cosmo’s Delivery and Logistics is a great little poker game with an interesting twist of cheating. With a great pick-up and put-down vibe, I believe it would be better suited to a mobile device.

Written by: Ashley Barnett-Cosgrove