What Indie games were used to be
When you thought of an indie game, you used to think about interesting ideas, charming presentation, clever stories. If you look at what quality early indie games were on Steam, you will quickly realise that modern indie scene has nothing on it. Osmos is one great example how original and unmatched this game is in its own niche.
🌌What Osmos is?🌌
At first, I thought that it is a micro organism eating others, something like in Spore. Then I came to properly play this game after many years and to me it resembles galaxies or star systems. Each represented by its own little gravity bubble and evolving, becoming more powerful by the amount of material it consumes. The reality is probably somewhere in between these two things as it doesn’t follow our normal definitions and it does its own thing. Sometimes it seems more like a life, other times – galaxies.🕹️Gameplay🕹️
Gameplay is made out of free parts which put a twist on basic mechanics. Eventually when you complete all the levels, you get an endless mode which is a nice way to have more gameplay for people who just want to play more. Ambiet tour
Calicifer’s Reviews
- In this game mode, you are trying to absorb static elements which have a minimal inertia. It means that environment around you slowly changes and eventually it will soft lock out preventing you from winning this level. Some levels have more inertia, meaning you have to act fast, others – very little. This is the most straight forward game mode about which you think when you see Osmos.
Force - This game mode is about gravity. You usually will be locked around the start, black hole or just a massive attractor. With gravity and orbits you have to move around and to consume enough materials to become the biggest. Eventually consuming star itself and shattering gravity well which causes all material to fly out of the map. That includes you and your momentum. Where, when and how you kill the star is very important in this game mode.
Alternatively, there are the opposite – repulsors. These elements repulse normal material and you need a lot of momentum to capture them. You have to approach them in a completely different way, often with patience and getting up to a lot of speed. Altering your course in advance to make sure that repulsor cannot easily get away from you and you can alter your trajectory easily in order to catch it in evasive actions.
Most interesting is when you have to play in multi-star systems with multiple gravity wells. You have to consume what you can in your star. Then plan ahead how you are going to escapee your gravity well and float across open space. Then you need to be caught by gravity of another star. There is a lot of depth in it. From which direction are you coming? You can come from opposite direction which ensures the easiest way to hop between the stars, but you might rotate in an opposite way from all the other elements. Good if you are the biggest, bad otherwise, because you will have a high risk into bumping to something bigger which would result in a lot of lost mass then trying to evade. Then there is the issue of movement. To move you expend material which is used for your growth. You can easily expel a lot of material out of the system into the void which causes it to be lost permanently. You want to avoid that, because this is how you soft lock yourself from completing a level. The greatest challenge however is deciding when to eat an attractor. This is problematic, because not only you need to clear the surrounding orbit first out of available matter, but also to collapse your orbit to the star at the right time and position in order for your momentum to catapult you to where you want to go. You can easily catapult yourself out of this game if you do it badly. In addition, this decision often lead into all remaining matter just flying off, meaning that you can easily and permanently destroy matter this way. It is complex dilemma to solve and this is where game shines the brightest where almost all of its mechanics come into play.
Artificial Life - This is the last game mode and potentially most frustrating one. In this game mode you are playing against other AI players who can consume matter and grow. They can also pursue their targets and flee from them. This makes them dangerous to you. First, they can catch you or escape you. Secondly, they tend to eat up matter in the map. Especially later on, they grow incredibly quickly and that forces you to play aggressively in order to outgrow them and to starve them out of available matter. Due to their unfair advantages in speed, location and size, game can feel quite unfair in this game mode. It becomes less about thinking about your next move and more about repetition until you learn level perfectly.
A Classic Indie Game
Why something like Osmos can be considered as a good game which is worthwhile even in this day with all these new and flashy games done by AA companies? Maybe my history with this game blinds me into thinking that it is better than it is? I have these thoughts and I do not believe that it is the case. I do find this game unique, offering gameplay which no other game I know provides. This makes it alone a game within a niche where no better alternatives exist and that makes it to win by default. Then the only question is: was this game genuinely fun to play. To me, yes. Game is polished, its mechanics are clever. It was engaging product and I’m glad that I played it.Calicifer’s Reviews
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