Cosmos Quest

**Cosmos Quest** was created by *GaiaByte* and with supports of *Aoyukii*. It later then released on February 17, 2017 on Kongregate, one of the most popular game online website. After 2 weeks of releasing, it quickly reached 1 million players play this game.

It is released with a very simple gameplay: idle, clicker, with Space, Sci-Fi theme. Your goal is to conquer Space and Time, collect energy and develop your Civilization from mere Caveman to powerful Posthuman beings that can change the fabric of Universe.

Discover new ways to obtain energy and invent awesome machines to collect energy from all kind of sources.

This game is based on the Kardashev Scale, a theory about technological advancement based on the energy usage of a Civilization.

## Game Window

*\*Click on any feature to view more information*

## The developers

Below are interviews of the developers with MadManix

### **GaiaByte**

'*GaiaByte'*or commonly known as the founder of Cosmos Quest.

**Source**: Kongregate Forums

**MM**: How old are you?
**GaiaByte**: *28*

**MM**: Where do you live?
**GaiaByte**: *I live in Barcelona*

**MM**: Your (nick)name, **GaiaByte**, means something like “digital earth (or nature)”. Is this something you see humanity evolving towards? Or are you more pessimistic about our future?
**GaiaByte**: ***GaiaByte** is actually the name of the company and has the company motto inside it: “Create living games”. Our vision is to create games that evolve as you play them.*
*I don’t see humans evolving much further as species actually, we could conquer the Solar system but an organic being can’t do much more in that aspect. I feel that digital beings are the next evolutionary step and they are the ones that will be able to discover the secrets of the universe/multi-verse.*

**MM**: Do you do anything else beside designing games?
**GaiaByte**: *I’m mostly a programmer who makes games when he’s bored. I spend my free time cooking, watching anime and TV series, playing video games and building things like legos.*

**MM**: Do you like (computer) games in general? If so, what kind of game do you like to play?
**GaiaByte**: *I like all kinds of games, I was molded by the RPG Tibia. So my kind of game has strategy, freedomand punishment. I’m currently finding this kind of gameplay in competitive games but none has made me feel the same.*

**MM**: Did you study programming?
**GaiaByte**: *I started Computer Engineering but I dropped out after the first year. I’m mostly a self-taught programmer although I have a degree in Video Game Development that I’ve recently obtained.*

**MM**: How did you come up with the idea of making the Kardashev Scale into an upgrade/idle game?
**GaiaByte**: *I wanted to make an idle game at first and then I remembered the Kardashev Scale and it was a natural fit for an idle game. Energy is the resource of everything and species build collectors in order to transform it for their own benefit. Also the possibility to explore the matter in an infinite scale was very appealing to us since we all liked science and SF. We regretted that after we realized there wasn’t much literature on the subject once you break the 1 universe point, but we managed to create plausible theories.*

**MM**: Are you a science fiction fan? If so, who are your favourite writers or what are your favourite SF (graphic) novels?
**GaiaByte**: *My favourite SF show is Stargate, I love the idea of having to deal with more advanced species from the Human perspective. I’m also very interested in computers overcoming humans and the moral dilemma it brings to the table. Ghost In The Shell, Person of Interest and Westworld would be good examples of that.*
*I might disappoint someone here but I never find time to read.*

**MM**: How did you find **Aoyukii**? Or did she find you?
**GaiaByte**: *I know Aoyuki since I was 16, we have been working on multiple projects together across the years. She has always been my first call every time I’ve started a project.*

**MM**: Why is there nothing (except the intro bitmap) else on your website?
**GaiaByte**: *Hahaha, I was planning to give it some content but after the success of Cosmos Quest it has been hard to find time to make a decent company webpage. If you want to know more about us you can find me on Kongregate, I sit in Room 1 a lot.*

**MM**: What do you think about your loyal players on Kongregate?
**GaiaByte**: *I think that I wouldn’t be here without my players so I love all of them whether they are loyal or not. But I’m grateful that a community like Kongregate exists, they’ve helped us a lot to improve our game.*

**MM**: What are you planning next (besides maintaining the fabulous Cosmos Quest)?
**GaiaByte**: *We are always exploring new games to make but right now we don’t have anything tangible.*

**MM**: Anything else you’d like to add?

**GaiaByte**: *First of all let me thank you for your initiative, it’s the first interview I’ve ever received. We sometimes focus too much on work and forget to explain more about us.*
*We made **GaiaByte** '**to'** give us the opportunity to do what we love, we didn’t know if we would succeed but it was worth the try. Now we are here with the chance the players gave us to '**pursuit'** our dreams, we hope that we won’t let anyone down.*

**MM**: Thank you, it was very kind of you to take the time to answer my questions.

### **Aoyukii**

**Aoyukii** or commonly known as the art designer of Cosmos Quest.

**MM**: Hi **Aoyukii**. How old are you?

**Aoyukii**: *My birthday was this past november, I’m 27 now.*

**MM**: Where do you live?
Aoyukii: *I live in Barcelona.*

**MM**: This may be a weird question, but apparently Aoyuki is Japanese for “blue snow position”. Why did you chose that (nick)name?

**Aoyukii**: *When I was 14 I was looking for a good name for a character I made and I pick the japanese words “Blue” and “Snow”. Aoyuki, that’s my nick since then. The extra “i” it’s for the misfortune that someone else chose that name in Kongregate before me. T . T*

**MM**: Do you do anything else beside designing artwork for games?

'*Aoyukii****:*** **I’m only working for 'GaiaByte''***right now. I’m a lucky artist that can live doing what I love to do.*

**MM**: Did you study art in any way?

**Aoyukii**: *I studied art in high school, and I have a degree in arts and design. All my life is oriented to artistic study.*

**MM**: What kind of art/artists/artistic movements interest you?

**Aoyukii**: *I’m not into one kind of movement, but if I had to choose one I would say impressionism. I like figurative art, beautiful and colorful.*
William Joyce, Even Amundsen, Phobs and Amélie Fléchais are one of my most loved artists. And if you like comic books you have to read “Low” written by Rick Remender and drawn by Greg Tocchini.

**MM**: How did you end up making the (fabulous) artwork for Cosmos Quest?
**Aoyukii**: *I’ve been making games with Gaia since 2012 or before. We are friends and he needed an artist to participate in a videogame contest. We’ve been making games together since then. We created Cosmos Quest because we wanted to start a video game company and now we are more than two! Prepare yourselves cause this is only our first step!*

**MM**: Have you made other artwork (for games or for any other sort of medium)?

'*Aoyukii****:*** **Before 'GaiaByte''***was created I worked for a little project, but the productors stopped the game production.*

**MM**: Do you like (computer) games in general? If so, what kind of game do you like to play?

**Aoyukii**: *I like video games but I’m not a gamer girl. I grew up playing with color pencils and paint, so I don’t have a gamer mentality. Now I’m starting into the videogames world and playing more. I like fantasy games where I can relax and enjoy the environment, the '**music'** and the history.*

**MM**: What (other) projects are you involved in at the moment?

'*Aoyukii****:*** **Cosmos Quest won’t be our unique game. In 'GaiaByte''***we want to offer to the world more great games, and that’s what we were doing now. What’ll be and how? You’ll see it in the future.*

**MM**: Art makes the world a better/more beautiful place. If you could change one thing on earth, what would it be?

**Aoyukii**: *If I could change anything, I’ll change humanity. Erasing greed and human egoism. We need to have more respect and love for what we have around us.*

**MM**: How do you see the future of humanity? Could it evolve along the line of the game, or are you more pessimistic about it?

**Aoyukii**: *As I said in the last question, If we don’t change our minds we deserve our extinction.*

**MM**: Anything else you’d like to add?

**Aoyukii**: *If you want to know about our team. We started being two but now we are a little bigger. We have a really talented composer that makes all the music and sounds of the game (She still loves you all even when knowing you mute her work). Helping Gaia came Spike and now we have four more programmers in the company and helping me we have two more artists. One of them is doing all the last heroes, you’ll may noticed the improvement, he is a master.
You can see his art in: http://instagram.com/rafater\_official*
Here you can see the art of my coworker: https://www.instagram.com/santiartwork/

And that’s mine: https://www.instagram.com/lgarrosset

We are still learning but we hope you’ll love our next games the same way you love Cosmos Quest!

MM: I'm very grateful you took the time to answer my questions.

## External Links

* Play Cosmos Quest here.
* Cosmos Quest's official website

## References

 Big Crunch: Jump • Buildings • Challenges • Experiment • Stats • Species • Disaster • Research