Very interesting horror, edutainment, point-and-click adventure game. You wander around the old capital encountering local lords, priests, peasants, samurai, demons, ghosts, and so on and on.
It pretty nicely demonstrates the religious syncretism of Japan. You'll be killed by a Yokai and then be reincarnated. In this you can see the representation of traditional superstitions still observed while Buddhist ideas were becoming more popular in the time period Cosmology is set in. The game even walks you through the procedure of the time for prayer at a Buddhist temple. There is a thorough glossary of terms relating to landmarks, spirituality, superstitions, and the relevant history. If you're interested in these topics, you could spent a lot of time just reading glossary entries.

As for the horror elements, the overall atmosphere is unsettling. Characters are visually reminiscent of Terry Gilliam's paper cut-out animations from the various Monty Python shows and films, and a lot of the humans and demons are very grotesque. You encounter demons ripping people apart. A local lord orders a beheading. Many random acts of violence all around. For the last couple of years I have returned to this game around Halloween to poke around, it fits the mood of October very well.
Cosmology of Kyoto doesn't run well on modern hardware, unfortunately. Menu options are invisible, making interacting with items and NPCs trial and error for where to put your cursor and click.

Cosmology of Kyoto is, in essence, an edutainment game that chooses a very particular formula to teach the player about Heian-era Kyoto- that is, to allow them to explore a fictional version of it, one designed not for 1:1 historical accuracy, but for the purpose of letting them witness various events found in its history, religion and folklore in the form of brief vignettes they will inevitably run into as they aimlessly wander through its empty streets at night.

Kyoto's presentation is incredible. While the animation is limited, the pixel art is outstanding, painting humans and demons alike with a grotesque style that brings traditional Japanese artwork to life in an extremely striking way. Voice acting and sound design are also very effective. There's not much to the gameplay, being a very basic version of a point and click, but just the sheer intrigue of seeing more of this world is enough to keep one going. There is an end state, however hard it might be to find, and I thought the ending was actually pretty cool.

this game is such a treasure, a complete immersion in the spiritual world of 700-900s japan! and it even comes with a great index of themes and characters involved in the story as well as research sources used to make the game possible

removed half a star because i thought the part beyond the palace gates was sadly too short compared to the time it takes to be able to get there (a time that can also be kinda frustrating if you’re bad at directions like me LOL). i used an online guide at one point to see if i had triggered all possible scenes and events. played it all in one sitting but didn’t time it so idk how long exactly it took me (2-3 hours is my estimate?)

Cosmology of Kyoto is an odd artefact from an era in which the popularization of personal computers, and computer games, led to a wave of experimentation with the digital medium, which gave us a lot of very interesting pieces that don't always fit with what we currently think of when we think "computer game".

If we look at it with a contemporary lens Cosmology of Kyoto is a horror game, a point-and-click adventure, a walking simulator and an edutainment game. But I don't think that kind of labelling would do it any justice. What I would call it instead is an exercise in form. The odd, fragmented structure; the freeform almost museum-like quality of the play; the functional and mood-driving use of death, are all incredibly interesting takes on how a digital space could be structured. To an extent they feel like evolutionary dead ends, but that's not for any inherent failing of their own, but because adventure games moved from there in totally different (and more lucrative) directions.

But yeah, no, you should probably play this if you like video games.

And, like, content-wise it's super spooky while at the same time being quite interesting and informative. Perfect Halloween game tbh.

But also, I dunno, I look at Cosmology of Kyoto and its very purposeful design decisions, and I think about what could have video games been if that wave of computer games had been allowed to flourish. It feels like we lost quite a lot when the medium became this "ease of use modern fun design" monolith, and left this kind of structural experimentations, not necessarily rooted in videogame-isms, behind.

Undoubtedly an interesting game, especially for the time, but not exactly what I was expecting going through. The surreal and more outwardly superstitious aspects were really intriguing and made me keep going, but the rest didn't grab me as much; it felt more like an abstract history lesson. Not that that's a bad thing, mind, but it didn't compel me to push through the dated playstyle and bugs that my copy had. If a die-hard fan of this game sees this, if there's any way to play this without game-ruining bugs (that of the blank text boxes), please let me know. I want to like this more, but from what I can find, it's just pretty good.

One of the most interesting PC “games” I’ve ever played.
This title is less of a game and more of an interactive piece of computer software, or as the box puts it, a “visual mindscape”. It takes place in Kyoto at the time of the Japanese Heian period and is deeply rooted in Japanese myth and spiritualism, primarily with Buddhist ideas and concepts.

You start off in a field just outside Kyoto with absolutely nothing to your name. You have no money and are completely naked to boot. Luckily, nearby is the skinny and decomposing corpse of some unfortunate fellow, whom you can steal the clothes of. After looting the corpse, you can make your way to the city gate only to be told off by a stern samurai. You can easily sneak in through a hole in the wall, though.

Now you’re in Kyoto and the world is at your fingertips. There is no indication of where you should go or what to do; you must give yourself the motivation to see what lies in this city.

Kyoto is in a very rough condition during this time. The homeless and the sick line the walls and fences of the city begging for scraps while demons prey on unsuspecting humans and the rich elites vie endlessly with one another for further power. Wandering too far into any section of the city will result in seeing something you’d probably rather want to avoid, or maybe it will happen directly to you instead. This something is obviously a very cruel death.

Should this happen you will be sent to the afterlife and depending on your karma you will be sent to vastly different realms. Karma in this game is determined by what actions you did while you were alive, and if it is negative you are sent to one of the Buddhist realms of hell and torture, and if it is positive you will enjoy a good afterlife.

After your afterlife is complete you will be reincarnated. Even if your karma is negative, you will likely be reborn as a human, but if it falls too low a dog will be decided to be a much more suitable form for you. If you are reincarnated as a human, you will have to steal clothes off of another corpse, that being your own corpse from your previous life.

You might be thinking that death is a total pain that you’d rather want to avoid. There are a number of ways one can die in this game; sickness, food poisoning, assault, etc. but the one most players are going to die to first are demons. Demons roam around in certain sections of Kyoto, and for the unprepared human they mean instant death. The game does give the player a few options to deal with them, however.

You can visit the Buddhist temple and become a monk, learning various scriptures gaining access to scrolls that ward away demons. Even if you choose not to become a monk, the monks there are charitable to give you a one use scroll. If you are not a spiritual person you may head to the bustling marketplace, the most active location in Kyoto. There you can purchase bows and arrows to attack demons from afar. Many demons probably won’t be discouraged from attacking you just because you’re armed though.

Really, I could go on and on with the multitude of events and things one can do. It feels like an open world game but much much smaller with little to no empty space and all of the interesting things in the same location without unnecessarily long travel distances between them. Everything I’ve written about here are things that can be encountered in the first 10 minutes of playing BTW.

So yeah, I thoroughly recommend experiencing this title. It is so expansive and large that it is impossible for any two players to have the same experience, so if you decide to try it please let me know how it was. I also apologize if this review seems a bit rambling as there’s so much I could write about this I become a little overwhelmed and have to limit myself to just the gameplay experience.
I really need to play more of these DOS games

I plan to revisit it from time to time. I thought it would last about an hour, but there are many things to discover and read. So far, I've managed to obtain a sutra, useful for warding off demons one might encounter around the city.

It's very engaging; it builds a formula for the open-air museum that I really appreciate, mixing architecture, folk tales, religious beliefs and historical characters. The most crucial aspect is the exploration in highly atmospheric settings, both due to the graphic-artistic rendering and the sound design. The exploration comes with descriptions provided on a time to time basis depending on what you find; there's also a viable encyclopedia that you can fully read whenever you want. Additionally, there are puzzles necessary for progression or to gather more information. The puzzles themselves can be a bit challenging, especially because there's a textual component where the player interacts with certain NPCs, writing responses or making requests. I imagine the issues are mainly due to translation issues. Fortunately, in several instances, dialogues progress regardless of what is written, presumably to overcome this problem. Another issue is that instead of the text box there's a glitch: a white rectangle that obscures everything, likely due to emulation.

Graphically, the game is beautiful, and the artworks integrate seamlessly into the game interface. The UI, with its minimalism and pitch-black color, is impactful, although arguably unnecessary. There's a considerable amount of unused space; at most, I would like for a portion of this space to be used for the main artworks and to give more space to the backgrounds; that's just a minor observation though.

Ironically, death occurs in a context where beliefs converge with Buddhist disciplines, introducing an element of rebirth and reincarnation. In this sense, it manages to be very modern, assigning meaning to the player's defeat. It allows exploration of the jigoku (hells) and, after undergoing torture or witnessing a cycle of death and rebirth, returning to the city where the events unfold.

Note: In the game interface, there are two small squares at the bottom, one on the right and the other on the left. These represent, respectively, a depiction of the coins in your possession and the level of karma. If one possesses a low level of karma, they will be reborn as dogs.