Demo becomes real for Cosmic Void's Tachyon Dreams Anthology

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Announcements by Jack Allin
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Comedic sci-fi freeware trilogy to re-released commercially with new content by the creator of Twilight Oracle

Cosmic Void sure is keeping busy these days. Not only is the indie developer's upcoming Twilight Oracle due out early in the new year, but the next new – or rather new/old – project is now visible on the horizon as well, in the form of the retro sci-fi comedy Tachyon Dreams Anthology, coming next summer.

If the name sound familiar, it's because the Tachyon Dreams adventures were originally released as freeware games, debuting in October 2021. All three games star Dodger, a "dishwashing dude onboard Penrose Space Station" who finds himself unexpectedly thrust into extraordinary circumstances far above his pay grade. In The Radiant Fish of the Apocalypse, one of the Penrose's "temporal experiments" goes disastrously wrong, leaving Dodger left to "save the fate of the timeline itself." His universe-saving adventures will take Dodger all over time and space as he'll need to "explore prehistoric jungles from 300 million years ago, navigate a post-apocalyptic world 85 years into the future ... and journey across the galaxy to aid ancient aliens in their cosmic clash against some other aliens." Across a wide variety of extraterrestrial landscapes, he'll also need to confront his own person demons and "make peace with [his] past" along the way.

The Tachyon Dreams games are unapologetically retro, recalling early AGI Sierra classics like Space Quest with their chunky lo-res EGA pixel art, points system, keyboard controls, text parser for solving puzzles, and even "80s-style comedy" in watching the unlikely protagonist "hilariously flounder about." They don't, however, include any of the things we'd rather leave behind from that era, such as dead ends, undeserved deaths or illogical puzzle solutions. And instead of merely repackaging the three games with "polished art and text" for commercial purposes, for the anthology they will be woven together into a single seamless storyline with additional new content, promising "more rooms to explore, more items to collect, more puzzles to solve, more story - more of everything!"

The full version of the Tachyon Dreams Anthology isn't due out until June 25, 2024, but if you can't wait to get started, you can dive right into the playable demo already available on Steam.