Has is only been four seasons since last GDC? Hard to believe - it seems like so much has happened since then! Anyways, we’re taking off for San Francisco tomorrow. Andy and I will be giving a talk on Wednesday about Osmos and game design minimalism. (We’ll post the slides after GDC.) Besides that, just looking forward to a great week of meeting up with friends, soaking up buckets of game dev ideas and wisdom, and generally enjoying the west-coast San Francisco scene.
Many fans have requested it, and here it is — brought to you by Peter Kirn, the man behind the most excellent Create Digital Music website.
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It’s an extended, free soundtrack, featuring full tracks from Loscil, Gas 0095, Julien Neto, High Skies and more, running 50 minutes in total. The .m4a version also includes chapter markers and visuals (screenshots).
What more can we say, except enjoy! And a big thank you to Peter and all the artists who graciously allowed us to release this mix of their wonderful ambient music.
Have we got a deal for you! This Valentine’s we’re banding together with five other independent developers to bring you a sweet bundle of Indie Love. It’s an $85 value for only $20!! The games are:
And Yet It Moves, by Broken Rules
Auditorium, by Cipher Prime
Aztaka, by Citeremis
Eufloria, by Omni Systems
Machinarium, by Amanita Design
Osmos, by Hemisphere Games
We’ve crafted our games with a lot of love and passion and this Valentine’s Day we thought we would put all our love in one place. Give this amazing indie bundle to your valentine or treat yourself to some delicious gaming goodness! It really has been a group effort and we are trying our absolute best to give you the same well-known price point you’ve come to expect from the big distributers. This time, we’re throwing the sale ourselves and all your purchases will go directly to the great indie teams who made these games.
Hell, even we bought it!
So what are you waiting for? Buy The Indie Love Bundle today. Sale ends on Friday, February 19th.
Enjoy, and happy Valentine’s,
- Hemi team and friends
For those of you making an “Osmos Rage!” video: go away, this post ain’t for you, ya big sissies. But for those who are interested in beating those last few levels in the main game, read on.
Given the Achievement stats on Steam, it’s pretty clear that the last few Force levels are where people are really getting stuck. In particular, F3A-3 and F3C-3. (F3A-2 is a fair bit easier since version 1.6.0.) So let’s dive right in. (Now might be a good time to make a pot of tea.)
F3A-3
Zen Attractors 3 is all about efficient orbit manipulation. For those interested in some deeper reading on the subject, start here and here, paying attention to Hohmann transfers in particular. But I’ll present enough material here to get you transferring Osmos orbits with the best of them. (Strangely, I was unable to find an easy to understand “how to efficiently manipulate your obit” tutorial on the web. I guess it doesn’t come up very often in everyday life.)
Take a look at the leftmost image in the diagram below. (Click any image for a larger version.) The red circle is an Attractor, the blue circle is you, and the green circle is your target. Both you and your target are moving in a circular, counter-clockwise orbit. Note that because your orbit is closer to the Attractor, it takes less time to come full circle than for your target.
The first step is for you to speed up to grow your orbit (by clicking behind your mote a few times), as in the middle image. You are now in an elliptical orbit that intersects your target’s orbit. Note that your new elliptical orbit shares a point with your old circular one, and you will continue to return to the point where you “made your move” (ie. clicked to fire mass). Now it’s just a matter of time. You may not come close to hitting your target in your first trip around the Attractor, but if you wait a while, you will. And when you get close, a few judicious clicks should be enough to catch your target. Remember you can warp time: speed it up if you’re waiting for a good fly-by opportunity, and slow it down when you’re close and want time to think and perform micro-adjustments. That’s the basic recipe!
Here’s a video example for good measure. (About two-and-a-half minutes to complete the level. Watch in fullscreen.)
For completeness, the rightmost image above shows how to complete a Hohmann transfer (ie. moving from one circular orbit to another). By speeding up again when reaching the apoapsis (the “far end” of your orbit’s ellipse), you can grow your orbit to the new, larger circle. Again, note that you will continue to return to the last point where you adjusted your speed. (And you will no longer return to a point on your original, smaller circular orbit.)
To shrink your orbit, simply do the reverse: slow down to go from diagram 3 to 2, and slow down again to go from 2 to 1.
Note that you can make these adjustments anywhere in your orbit, but it’s most instructive to view them in this way. Experiment away!
F3C-3
Once you find Zen Attractors 3 easy, it’s time to tackle Epicycles 3. The first thing to practice is efficient orbit escapes and how to fall back into orbit around an outer-Attractor. This is what the tutorial level F3C-1 is for. Practice moving from Attractor to Attractor, and watch how clicking affects your epicyclic orbit. Once you get a good feel for this, you should be able to put all your skills together and beat F3C-3.
Personally, I prefer to visit each of the three outer-Attractors in turn, absorbing their satellites, then absorbing an outer-Attractor, and finally moving into the central Attractor’s orbit to absorb its satellites and finally the Attractor itself. Any remaining outer-Attractors will then leave the “blobiverse” due to their inertia and be absorbed by the red, circular border. But there are multiple ways to do it. A good discussion on strategies can be found on the Steam forums here.
Here’s a video example of how to do it. (It’s over seven minutes long. Refill that teacup and watch in fullscreen.)
As was wisely pointed out by pez0 on the Steam forum: “Think before scooping up the orbiting attractors! If you come from behind in orbit, they’ll accelerate you forward really hard, causing your orbit to expand and you to crash into the wall. This is because gravity isn’t mutual - you accelerate but the attractor does not. Momentum is not conserved so don’t be afraid to dump huge amounts of mass into the attractor to slow yourself down as you’re pulled into the gravity well. You’ll get the mass back immediately when you absorb the attractor, but you’ll retain the change in momentum.” It’s true; in these levels, Attractors’ velocity is not affected by satellites, including you, so momentum is not conserved. Without this physical “cheat” in the game’s design, the Epicycle levels wouldn’t be stable enough to play. So include that technique in your arsenal. I actually use it in the video around 6:19 to slow down as I’m absorbing the first Attractor. (Though it’s hard to make out since I’m firing mass right into the Attractor.) Thanks pez0!
One final note. All levels in their default form are winnable — randomization is never necessary. It’s true, if you randomize enough you may get a particularly easy configuration, but I don’t recommend this strategy. The randomization feature is there to offer players variety, not luck.
Conclusion
So there you have it, the end of our “Osmos Rage” series. Hopefully all this helps you really enjoy the final stages of the game — that’s why we made them in the first place! And who knows… maybe people will even learn something along the way.
Except you video makers out there. You guys’ll never amount to nuthin’!
Welcome to part 3/4 of our “Osmos Rage” series. We introduced the topic in part 1, announced a video contest in part 2, and today we explain why the game gets “so bloody hard” in the end.
Believe it or not, our primary motives were a) truth and b) respect.
Truth: to the game concept and the scientific principles that underlie it. We could have easily made an easier game. In fact, I am 100% certain Osmos would have received better reviews and a better Metacritic rating if we had done so. For the most part, reviewers and gamers alike really appreciated the concept, execution and ambiance of the game, but a common complaint was the difficulty in the late stages. We could have simply removed those late stages, but there are some beautiful mathematical and physical principles that only emerge in them: subtleties of momentum transfer, efficiency, and in particular orbital mechanics. Players can “brute force” their way through most of the easier levels, but not these. In these, the player is forced to really understand the systems at work, and how to be efficient in them. These are some of my favorite levels in the game, and I feel we would have done a disservice to the concepts and to players by leaving them out.
Respect: for players and their time. Levels in Osmos are procedurally generated, so it would have been trivial for us to add more. We could have stretched the game out with a much smoother difficulty curve; It would have forced players to spend more time building their skills, but the game would have also felt more repetitive. We wanted each level to feel distinct, in concept or at least in difficulty. As an “adult gamer”, I don’t have the time nor inclination for grinding anymore. One of the things I really appreciated about Braid is its lack of filler — it had been reduced to the essential experience. I wanted Osmos to do the same.
And when I see reviews like this, it all feels worth it.
Somewhere between completely loathing the difficulty of the last level and finishing the game, I finally “got” Osmos. You see, Osmos was able to do what no other zen (or ambient) game has actually made me do—chill out. Osmos has made me contemplate the very essence of human existence, evolution, consumption, and so much more. The difficulty of Osmos’ later levels was very frustrating at first, and often caused me to quit the game rather angrily; I was approaching Osmos like I would any other game, swiftly trying to complete all given goals in the pursuit of completion. Once I started approaching Osmos as not a game, but as an experience, I was able to fully appreciate the genius behind it. - Dan Carew, Blast Magazine
We even got this praise from Jonathan Blow, creator of Braid.
The result, by the time you’ve finished, is not merely a satisfying game. It rings with that faint and distant sound of truth: because the game is based around laws of physics, it immerses you in these and you learn something about them. Perhaps not anything you didn’t already know in an abstract intellectual way, if you took physics classes in school; but here, you get a feel for them, so they become more real, more tangible. This game can change your perspective.
All that said, people may still criticize our presentation of Osmos as an “ambient” game. My honest opinion is: it’s mostly ambient, but not entirely. Our focus throughout was on gameplay. Yes, we put a lot of love, time and importance into the mood, visuals and sound; but when we discovered level types that really worked well with the fundamental mechanics of Osmos, we included them, even if it meant breaking the ambient rule somewhat. In the end, Osmos is a tricky game to summarily describe, and since it’s mostly relaxed, we kept the tag. For thoroughness, here’s a detailed breakdown by level type:
One third of the levels are in the game’s “Ambient” branch, and I believe these easily qualify.
The “Sentient” levels, however, are not. They’re fun, and they’re many people’s favorite level type; but given the time pressure imposed by the AI opponents, they aren’t really relaxed — the player needs to click too quickly and too often. (Though slowing down time makes things much less frenetic.)
The “Force” branch is a mixed bag. I find that once one understands how to navigate in these systems, the “Zen Attractor” and “Epicycle” levels truly are zen; patience and judicious clicking is the way to play and win these levels. “Warped Chaos” levels on the other hand are not relaxed; players need to move quickly at the start to gather as much mass as possible. However, once these levels stabilize, it becomes more like a slow, warped billiards game than anything else, which is quite ambient.
Finally, we included a number of features in Osmos that give the player a great deal of control over the difficulty and progression.
Time Warping: This allows the player to control the speed of the game, giving them enough time to think and click wisely. It’s a form of user-controlled DDA (Dynamic Difficulty Adjustment). It also allows players to speed up time to avoid long waits, or to increase the difficulty for the hardcore.
Randomization: Instead of including more levels and potentially creating too shallow a difficulty curve, we included this feature. Players who are looking for more in-between levels need look no further. If you’re frustrated on a level you can’t beat, go back one level and play some random variants. You’ll enjoy it a lot more while still building your skills. Try to do those variants as efficiently as possible; before long, you’ll be able to return to that “impossible” level, and probably beat it.
Hopefully this helps people understand the rationale behind the difficulty of Osmos’s later levels; and perhaps you’ve found this view on our design decisions interesting. We stand by them, though we’re always open to constructive criticism. Actually, no… wait… screw “constructive” and hold on to that rage! We need videos!! Tortured, infuriated, death-metal videos! We’re bad, bad people. Throw rocks at us. We deserve it.
The last few levels in Osmos get hard. They’ve induced rage in some gamers and in more than one reviewer. (See the previous post for the full introduction.)
Before we offer explanations or further remedies, we want to harness that rage. Prior to our recent difficulty adjustments, user jnfenrir began a thread on the Steam forums entitled “Osmos badly needs a difficulty rebalance,” eloquently stating the reasons why. One thing in particular stood out for me:
“Osmos’s difficulty wouldn’t be a problem if it was being marketed as a fiendishly challenging puzzle game, but since the main selling point is its supposed serene and relaxing nature, not being able to enjoy it completely because of the punishing difficulty feels a bit like a slap to the face.”
Even with the latest adjustments, I think jnfenrir has a valid point. Osmos is hard, but it certainly isn’t the hardest game out there. The problem is one of perception. Our zen/ambient presentation and marketing of the game doesn’t tell the full story. But what can we do to improve it?
The game’s music and visuals are soothing, but they fit very well with the gameplay, and are not disingenuous. And people really appreciate them. I’m happy with our choices on this front.
In the game description, we say “Progress from serenely ambient levels into varied and challenging worlds.” Hmmmm… we do say challenging. I suppose we could write “extremely challenging” but that’s a pretty minor change.
The demo. It’s true that the demo is easy. Or is it? I’ve seen people spend a lot of time trying to catch that Biophobe. Also, upon exiting, the demo says “The full version includes 47 levels, from serene to extremly challenging; plus bonus content.” I think that “extremly challenging” statement is fair. Should we include the game’s hardest few levels in the demo? For obvious reasons: no, we shouldn’t.
The trailer. I just watched our video again for the um-teenth time, and you know what? I think it’s the video! The trailer really sells the chill/ambient/serene nature of Osmos, but never mentions how hard it can get. The more I watch it, the more I’m convinced: If there’s one thing we should do, it’s update that video!
I spoke with Dave about this, and we agreed — we need a new video! The old one is already out there, and updating it with a more balanced one doesn’t sound like all that much fun. No, what we need is a video “response.” An “Osmos Rage!” video. Lifeforms being terminated, screams of fury, mice and keyboards being thrown…! We could try to do this ourselves, but really, we’re not that angry. Oh sure, we could try to fake it, but where’s the authenticity in that? There’s rage out there on the interweb tubes, I can feel it! Yes… a video contest. That’s the answer. A chance for gamers to exorcise their rage! To take their revenge. Revenge!!
So here it is, the call for “Osmos Rage!” videos. Angry, bitter, ridiculous, insane. Do your worst.
All submissions will be publicly viewable, and the winner will be decided by a combination of public voting and our final discretion.
The video must be more than simply gameplay capture. It should include live action, animation, voice, or anything else. Of course it can include gameplay footage, but it must be more than just that. And the more entertaining it is, the more people who will watch it, and be forewarned.
The video should be understandable to English audiences. Everyone enjoys a good “scheisse!”, “ostie!” or “mierda!” from time to time, but this, while really amusing, is a little lost on us.
We still need to work out some of the contest rules and details, like prize(s), how to submit your videos, eligibility, etc. (This idea is still somewhat half-baked!) You can begin submitting your videos in roughly one week. We’ll announce the submission details on this blog.
Since we released Osmos in August, we’ve been getting mostly great feedback from players and reviewers alike. Mostly. There is however one complaint that we see regularly, and very vocally: Rage.
“I’m done with Osmos. Done. F3A-3 is no fun.” -RSHabroptilus, Steam forums
“… playing Osmos was like getting knocked out by a sharp kick to the face from an eight year old.” -Ben Barrett, Gaming Daily review
“This is no walk in the park - Osmos is incredibly difficult” -Michael Rose, IndieGames.com review
” Osmos is without doubt a very entertaining game, but don’t let the ambient feel fool you; this game isn’t going to let you relax all the way through. For £6.99 you’re getting a worthwhile package and there’s a demo for you to see if it’s the right game for you. For most it will be engaging and addicting, if somewhat rage-inducing later on.” -Dominic Sheard, DarkZero review
As of this writing, only 2% of Steam players have completed the game. (ie. gotten the “Graduate of the Osmos” achievement) Looking at some of the other percentages to guess-timate how many people are actually trying to beat the game, I would hope this would be closer to 5-10%.
To remedy the situation, we recently adjusted the difficulty of the hardest few levels of the game. Those last levels are still hard, but I believe the game is balanced more fairly now; and since then, we’ve been seeing as many people defending the game’s difficulty as flogging it.
“I just wanted to give a big thanks to the devs for listening to the community and rolling out the difficulty update. F3C-3 is now the only Force zone I have left to beat…” -jnfenrir, Steam forums
Some are even saying it’s too easy now, though the bonus “forever” zones certainly mitigate that. That said, some of the late levels are still difficult.
This is the first of a four-part series of blog posts to “give back” to our players. This first one is simply this introduction. The second will address our “misleading” marketing materials, and give you all an opportunity for… revenge! The third will answer the question: Why did we make the game so bloody hard - are we sadists? And finally, the fourth will offer some practical advice on how to beat those final levels.
Mat Jarvis just released an awesome new mini-album - Sounds of Earth - under his High Skies moniker; and he’s generously allowed us to distribute it free for the next while to people who purchase Osmos from us. (New and existing customers, just visit your game download page.) If you enjoy the music in Osmos, you should definitely check it out. I’ve listened to it several times now, and the description on his website says it best:
Blade Runner meets Voyager, Deckard meets Sagan; an interstellar soundtrack to NASA’s Voyager spacecraft. Subtle, deep, swirling electronics are entwined with narratives, sounds and recordings taken from Voyager’s golden record, building to the huge electronics of the title track. Six tracks of deep phased, electronic sounds of Earth.
It also includes a “digital booklet on Voyager’s Golden Record”, which I highly recommend reading while listening to the album; it’s a beautiful feast for the mind and eyes as you enjoy the music. It reminds me of the days when I would come home with a new LP, put needle to vinyl, and actually sit in front of the stereo as I lingered over the entire package and liner notes. It’s a great concept and a real pleasure in this day of lonely mp3 files.
Click here for more info on the mini-album, including a free track, “The Shape of Things to Come”. That title may sound familiar — it’s the soundtrack to the “solar system” levels in Osmos. But the game only includes a 40-second loop, this is the full six-minute version.
The new version includes translations into four languages (French, German, Spanish and Italian), a decrease in the extreme difficulty of a few late leves, D3D support, sound engine improvements, and more. You can see all the details here.
For Hemisphere Games - and for me - 2009 was a whirlwind year. New Years’ day found me skiing and relaxing with good friends in Revelstoke, British Columbia. Osmos still lay in the hands of the IGF judges, quietly unknown to the world beyond a few friends and some very thorough IGF followers. I had put together a website for Hemisphere Games just before my trip to BC, along with an early Osmos demo which I made available. During my trip I logged in from time to time to see how it was faring: “One download of the Osmos demo today.” “Two downloads.” “Three downloads today!” I was excited to get it out there and get some initial feedback, though the website certainly wasn’t in danger of being overloaded.
I flew back to Montreal on January 8th, and before hitting the sack, checked my email: “Congrats!” “congratz!” “Holy Crap!” I read the emails. “What?!” I thought. “It can’t be.” Osmos had received three IGF nominations, including the Grand Prize. Articles on the finalists were already starting to appear online. I checked our website: over 500 downloads so far today! Excitedly, I shared the news with Dave, Andy, and Kun, as well as friends and Osmos contributors. The whirlwind began…
Here we are, a year later. Osmos was released in August and has been doing very well: sales have been good (for an indie PC title), and it’s received great reviews and feedback. It also won a few awards along the way, including “Best in Show” and “Fun/Compelling” at (the wonderful) IndieCade, D2D’s Vision Award (the prize money went a *long* way towards funding final production of the game), and it had been selected as one of the PAX 10. It was also nominated for Spike TV’s “best indie game” award, and a number of other best-of-year lists. Needless to say we’ve been pleased and amazed throughout! In recent weeks, we released the Mac port as well as the Games for Windows Live versions, which have kept us busy. Next steps: iPhone and Linux; and hopefully prototyping some fun ideas we’ve been discussing.
On the personal side of things, my girlfriend Angela and I moved across the country in the late Spring, from cosmopolitan Montreal to small-town-in-the-mountains Nelson, BC. Along the way I quit my job to go “full-time indie”, and Angela became pregnant!
The whirlwind never let up.
I went for a x-country ski today. The trees were filled with snow, and the sky was sprinkling big, beautiful flakes on everything; peaceful and quiet. I didn’t go too far, or for too long however, as Angela is due to give birth in two days…
So yeah, 2009 was a “pretty good year” for us. I can only imagine what 2010 will bring.
Thanks and best wishes to you all,
- Eddy, on behalf of the Hemi-team.
ps. The 2010 IGF Finalists will be announced tomorrow! Good luck to all the entrants… it can be quite the ride!
