Thanks… and Interviews

Posted by on Sep 23, 2009 in Game Design, Love, Osmos | No Comments

Well, it’s been just over a month since we released Osmos, and what a ride it’s been so far! We just want to take a moment to thank everyone who’s gotten (and hopefully enjoyed!) the game, and in particular those who have helped spread the word — by mouth, email and blogs. We really appreciate your support, and all the great feedback!

Of course, we haven’t been idle since the release, and we’ll be releasing more information in the near future on our plans, coming updates, ports, etc. People have been asking about the game’s origins and design as well, and we’ve answered quite a few questions in various interviews over the past month. So, for those interested in the background of Osmos and Hemisphere, check out some of these interviews:

  • Eddy, in an interview with Nick Robinson of Bytejacker. [“… It began as an idea while doing the dishes. (Must have been the soap bubbles.) In fact, it was the result of a lot of background thinking, and related to courses I took over the years on deformable modeling and spacecraft dynamics. Once struck by the initial idea, I put together a simple prototype over the course of a week. I then spent another week or so just playing around with music and sound; from the beginning those have been very important elements in Osmos…”]
  • Dave, in a post mortem with Lee Cieniawa at The Armchair Empire. [“…Osmos is a game of concepts and understanding, not speed. It’s not so much that you need to play the game passively; to win, you do still need to be assertive. It’s just that you can’t really afford to be wasteful. The player needs to be thoughtful and intentional… working with the flow rather than swimming upstream all the time…”]
  • Andy, in an interview with Charles Husemann of Gaming Nexus. [“… The music is an essential part of Osmos, both from an ambient, as well as from a game mechanics view. The lush soundtrack, ideally, will help the players relax, especially in the ambient stages. But then there are the sound cues, which are carefully balanced to coincide with key events in the game… Needless to say, we do not live in a vacuum, and are all avid gamers, so of course games like Rez, flOw and (to a lesser extent) Audiosurf were inspirational. Rez is clearly the high watermark for audio in games, and we can only hope to come close to this masterpiece…”]
  • Eddy, in an interview with Michael Lafferty of GameZone. [“… The first 8 tutorial levels are gentle, and the next wave of 10 levels are “pleasantly challenging”. From there, it depends on the branch of levels you choose; some are challenging but slow-paced and thoughtful, while some are truly difficult. So far, a little over 1% of the players have managed to “beat” the game, and not for lack of trying. That said, there’s a lot of replayability as well, including the ability to play random versions of any level. We try to encourage players to pick their level of challenge/comfort and spend time enjoying those level variations. When they start finding them too easy, they can always move on and up the ante…”]
  • Eddy and Dave in an audio interview with Ryan and Deo Gen Z of Nintendo Radio, in which we discuss styles of play and music; relaxed, iterative game design; pro-to-indie lifestyle changes…
  • Eddy in an audio interview at PAX with Omaha Sternberg of iGameRadio, in which we talk about the origins of Osmos; physics engines; plans for the Mac port…

Plenty of reading and listening for the curious. Enjoy! :)