So: Osmos. It’s a lot like Art Style: Orbient, no? In the mechanism of circles absorbing other circles until they become the largest circle, in the simplicity of the controls, in the puzzle nature, in the simplicity of the presentation, in the amount of content that’s perfectly reasonable for a five-dollar game. I like Osmos‘s aesthetics a little more (some of its forms of circles are quite lovely), and actually as far as gameplay goes, some of my least favorite bits are where it uses the orbiting mechanic that’s central to Orbient. (Hmm, I wonder why that is? Maybe because it’s the situation where Osmos‘s control scheme starts to become a bit obtuse, turning into an indirect version of Orbient‘s control scheme.) I like Osmos‘s pacing more, too: the directed version of the levels ran out just as I was getting frustrated, and it’s backed up by a solid procedurally generated arcade mode.

A pleasant way to spend a couple of hours when I was home sick; who knows, maybe I’ll dip into it more in the future, maybe not. I’m certainly glad that games of this weight exist, I should play them more.

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