So again ages ago, way back in the ether when Meodia wasn’t being “renovated” by a string of people who started working on it, then stopped half-way not telling the next guy in the line what they’ve done; I shouted as loud as I was able “the second Humble Indie Bundle was coming from those good fellows at Wolfire”. I naturally bought it and have only now got around to playing any of the games; Osmos is one such game.

 

Initially I loaded up Osmos as nothing more than a bit of a time-waster, something to make a half-hour go by a little quicker and here I am six hours later typing up a review, stricken with conflicting feelings of being slightly more relaxed but frustrated at the same time.

 

 

As first glance Osmos seems to be one the most causal of ‘causal games’; you control an orb known only as “the lifeform” in its quest to be biggest object in the local area. It shares a lot in common with ‘Flow’ if you ever played that game; but ultimately it feels a lot more like internet flash game ‘Eat the smaller fish to become a bigger fish’. You have no mouth all you need to do is bump into a smaller object to absorb it into your body, the more you absorb the bigger you get, so you can consume bigger objects and get even bigger. A very simple concept and as many people will attest to, it’s very addictive.

 

The thing is to move your glowing blue orb of cellular destruction you have to fire out little pieces of the orb with the game acting like you’re in the vacuum of space. So fire a piece off of you and you’ll move a bit and that piece will go flying off into the distance, anything it hits will get a little nudge which can set the red glowing orbs of planetary annihilation into a chain reaction absorbing each other until you don’t have a hope of completing the level. Anything you hit will also slow you down. So you’ve got to carefully manoeuvre yourself using the minimum amount of force and taking into account what affect your movements are doing on the other side of the map. The game starts simple with a couple of tutorials but it’s so easy to pick up they probably could have just left that out.

 

 

The game has three sections; the first is pretty much a straight version of what I just described but later levels will throw in Anti-matter orbs that suck the mass out of anything it touches. You’ve got to avoid these but also use them to your advantage; knocking them into large impassable orbs to shrink them down to size. The second section sees you going up against various other life forms; each one going after the inert red orbs to gain mass so they can ultimately eat you. This section livens things up a bit; as they’re fast mobile targets that avoid you and requires you to be quick of the mark to be the biggest and baddest non-descript circle in the sea/space/Petri dish. The last and final section of the game adds gravity to the mix. Now instead of simply floating around aimlessly everything is pulled along in an orbit and you must take this into account when you’re moving around and I have to say “Gravity is a cruel mistress”.

 

It’s this last section that is causing my head-ache; the rest of the game is a nice simple puzzle solving game with relaxing music and bright nice graphics. It’s almost like watching a TV show aimed at tired toddlers, a bit surreal but it works. This last section then is like when the college student watches the same program and keeps insisting the show is all about drugs “it’s called the Magic Roundabout for a reason man!” whether or not you believe him, the innocence is lost. The very last section sees you in orbit around a large object, which is also in orbit around a large object along with two others. Naturally they all have other small objects circling around for you to collect to become big enough. It is a pain in the ass and I swear I’ve been stuck on the last level for the past hour and despite wanting to throw my monitor out of the window I’m enjoying it to no end.

 

 

This is a casual game done right ladies and gentlemen. It lures you in with simple concepts and easy controls. You pick up the basics no worries and you’re flying through the game, enjoying the award winning music, which chills you out into a almost trance-like state, and then as the game progresses it gets more and more complex and annoying until you find yourself six hours later screaming at a blue orb that won’t move the way you want it too. Oh and the orb is called Mote according to by research…maybe it’ll respond to that, rather than other four letter words.

 

This game is well worth the low price that it’s going for and you can get it for your iTouch, iPad or get it from Steam, which also has a free demo to download if you’re interested.