Cosmonautica

Cosmonautica is a fun mix of space trading, crew management, and humor. You run a spaceship, manage your crew, trade goods, and fight off enemies. The cartoon look and funny dialogue keep things light, but it can get a bit repetitive after a while. It’s not super deep like other space games, but it’s great if you want something more casual and easygoing.

A bit buggy, but a fun way to while away some hours nonetheless. A good one to get on sale

I bought this game a long time ago, probably in a bundle from some place like HumbleBundle.
For it sitting in my library for years (essentially a free game at this point for me), it provided a fun few hours of diversion. I did not experience any crashing running the game through Steam's Proton on Linux. As long as you ignore the "main mission" for a few hours and just accumulate money and scientific discoveries for room unlocks, it's a good time. I didn't ignore the main mission and got stuck with cargo I couldn't sell or store (there is no such thing as cargo storage off-ship) which locked me out of a ship upgrade until I completed the part of the main mission that required the special cargo. I also encountered a glitch during that questline where the other half of the required cargo disappeared because I had already filled the rest of my cargo space with goods to actually sell. I could still complete the quest, but it was funny to see that I clearly did not deliver the other special cargo, the game just conveniently forgot I didn't have it.
That's the main problem with this game, as many other reviews probably illustrate well. A lot of frustrating, questionable design choices that make for poor quality of life. The core gameplay of trading, micromanaging your crew, and being captain of a space vessel is worthwhile and engaging. However, there's a long grind to get even basic facilities for your crew beyond literally a vending machine for a source of food, a single toilet, and a small bunk room. Once you get to the point where you think you can actually accommodate your crew properly and start taking on passengers, you realize your starter ship is about half the size it should be to house amenities for six crew plus passengers.
I'm at this point right now. I just upgraded my ship, bought a bunch of rooms, and installed a cleaning bot so I can start using my Cleaner person's cooking skills in the brand new kitchen. It took me 7 hours to get to this point according to Steam. I had a little help from the game wiki (I couldn't figure out if I needed to make space for weapons on my cargo ship that I didn't intend to send into combat). I haven't touched the combat part of the game yet.
Overall, I would say this game is fun for about 10 or 15 hours and then it will probably get stale. Reading other reviews, it sounds like the game has trouble running on the latest Windows 10/11 with updates. It would probably work well on Steam Deck or other SteamOS handhelds, but the UI doesn't look like it will scale down that well to a small screen. Not to mention, this game is not designed for a controller at all.
TL;DR Buy it on sale if you're not sure (multi hour grind to get the dopamine fix), less crashing on Linux with Proton.

This is an excellent game. No clue why Chasing Carrots abandon this game, especially when looking at some the other trash they've decided to try and develop. If they would return to this game and clean up some bugs, give it a final direction or end game goal... this game could have made them millions of dollars.

Definitely the type of hybrid game I'm into that gives the player several different avenues of activities to pursue while managing their spaceship and crew.
The individual mechanics might not have been all that deep, but the combination was still fun to play for a while.
Unfortunately it got R.I.P.'d.

Cosmonautica
Has a total of 8 trading cards.

this game is awesome and love the sim, with RTS feel