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’! 
on Feb 3rd, 2010 at 8:33 pm
Regarding these Osmos Rage posts, I think the analysis is correct that the current videos/trailers do tend to play up the chilled-out aspect of the game while not letting on that it is after all a puzzle game and it can get quite tricky. Also, I think it’s awesome that you guys decided to tune up the difficulty progression a bit (not that I had a problem with it). That said, please don’t go overboard. Osmos is _fantastic_ so please don’t apologize too much. Some of the later levels were terribly vexing, but that’s what kept me playing! Who are these wussies who keep complaining anyway??
What’s the point of being able to plow through a game in a day or less and then have nothing else to do with it but toss it aside? While the aesthetics are quite advanced in Osmos, the game play hit a bit of an 8-bit nostalgic spot; it gave me just the right number of holy-freaking-crap-this-is-hard moments.
Osmos is awesome. These wussmotes just need to toughen up a bit.
on Feb 5th, 2010 at 11:34 am
Friendly greetings in twentyten!
The uncanny depth of Hemisphere beckons me. I wasn’t expecting such a hypnotic aesthetic at bedtime, and I can say “Zen experience” without cliché. The overall elegance reminds me of gameplay-focused classics on my C64. Somewhere in all of this there’s a metaphor to the womb.
The ambient tunes are also gorgeous, except for times where I’m about to be absorbed — I wish tense dissonance cued me to that near-death fact. Perhaps you can consider it for the future?
That being said, I compose ambient music (e.g.,, http://torley.bandcamp.com/track/011-hyper-suspension ) and am wondering how to insert my music in the stages? I’ve read there’ll possibly be a level editor and this sounds like it’d be an attractive part of the package.
Thanks much in advance for the response and KEEP BEING CREATIVE, YEAH!
on Feb 9th, 2010 at 1:04 am
what charstar said. spot on.
on Feb 9th, 2010 at 1:32 pm
heya.. .big fan of your game… just wondering…
Does orbital slingshotting work in game?…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist
Is that something that will just work naturally in a gravitational sim like this, or does it have to be ‘programmed in’? I was trying to do that a bit (bringing myself close to the sun then firing thrust at the closest point) especially on the levels like the one where you have very little fuel to get yourself out to the far orbit to grab the 1 small blob. It seemed to work… i finished the level (loved it!) … but wasn’t sure if I was helping or hurting myself by first slowing down (go get close to sun) before speeding up at the close point.
Just wondering..
on Feb 13th, 2010 at 5:30 am
Thanks for the encouragement everyone! We also believe that the difficulty is well tuned now, and it’s good to hear our players feel the same way.
@zenpunk: Yes, gravity assists just work naturally! Thanks for asking, it’s one of those details I’m really pleased with. You can get the effect with the outer-Attractors in Epicycles, and with any Attractor in Warped Chaos. It’s not as important as in “real life” of course, since Osmos is many orders of magnitude easier (hah!
) than planning an efficient course in our solar system (as the relative distances are soooo much greater), but the effect is there.
@Torley: cool tune, thanks for sharing. There isn’t a supported way to override the music in Osmos, but you can always set the music volume to zero and then play any tune you like in a separate player. As for the level editor, it keeps getting bumped for “more important” things, but we’re still keen to get it done at some point — and we’ll make sure to allow custom music when it happens.
Cheers,
Eddy
on Feb 21st, 2010 at 10:44 am
Great game- thanks!
I’d appreciate if you would make the first video on this page (F3A-3: Zen Attractors 3) available for download on Vimeo. The second video (Epicycles 3) is downloadable.
I play Osmos offline on a netbook and am rarely connected. It’s alot more helpful if I can watch it while in the game.
Thanks!
on Feb 21st, 2010 at 7:26 pm
@Baja: Done, F3A-3 is now downloadable.
on Apr 18th, 2010 at 11:45 pm
Wow, love the game, and the difficulty, so thanks a whole lot for this, i was getting really frustrated at the final levels, so this helped a lot.
on Apr 29th, 2010 at 10:53 pm
Well, I certainly agree with you that there’s a place for those levels in the game, but I do agree that the difficulty ramps up way too steeply. For those of us who don’t do something once and then learn it forever, it would have been nice to have more than one level training us in some of the advanced concepts that we need to use extensively on the Force levels, for instance, and maybe a sentient blob or two demonstrating it on a Sentient or Force level for us, just in case we’re really thick-headed.
But anyway, great game, and perhaps someday I’ll feel inclined to put in the time to complete all of it.
on Dec 19th, 2010 at 8:07 pm
Thanks for this! I tanked through almost the entire game in a day, but I felt that that difficulty level of F3C-3 hit me like an anvil. (I loved the ambient levels, and swore a bit at the later Sentient ones
). I could tell that my problem was with efficiently changing orbits from one attractor to another, but I just couldn’t figure it out by myself. The tutorial video was just what I needed!
I do think that the difficulty of the levels ramps up a bit quickly, and that adding more levels might have helped; the random feature doesn’t really cover it (although, kudos on a great idea, it’s a lot of fun to go back and play earlier levels again with a twist, and its nice to be able to replay randomised levels as well).
on Dec 30th, 2010 at 12:29 am
If this game was just the Ambient and Sentient levels, it’d be a hell of a lot better than what it is. As it stands, all of the levels that deal with gravitational orbits make this game anything but a “relaxing zen-like experience of joy and fun” like you guys oh so love to promote. I haven’t been relaxed at all during it.
Even with the tutorials here, it’s hard to control and manage the orbits and I spend upwards of 20 minutes on a good attempt only to twitch and completely ruin what I’ve had.
There’s a reason why only 2.0% of all Steam users have beaten all of the Force zones. You have taken a good-on-paper concept and made stages based on it that are so frustrating that it ruins any inclination to have a fun and relaxing experience.
on Jan 5th, 2011 at 9:55 am
This game is really addicting, nice graphics and the music is chilling, all in all a Osmos is a beautiful game, but… it is also a terribly frustrating one.
Forcing the player to complete the (personally) near impossible force levels F3C-2 and F3C-3 just for getting the rest of the Ambient levels unlocked is a design flaw beyond any understanding. I would be fairer if the A4* and S4* levels get unlocked after completing the corresponding A3* and S3* levels.
A save game or time rewind function would make the whole experience more enjoyable.
on Sep 1st, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Strangely, I feel like I’ve learned something about planetary orbits. I think because Epcicycles reminds me of part of Microsoft Encarta that demonstrated different types of orbit (circular, elliptical, decaying and some weird ones).
Admittedly, I am kind of annoyed that I don’t have the last tier of the S zones open, but I’m a completionist. I want to finish every level in the game. I’m not someone who’s happy to play the same level over and over (it took me 6 attempts over as many days to get Black Hole Sun, and I hated playing the same damn thing each time).
But it’s not the game itself that’s the issue – it’s a physics-based game, much like Portal, and like Portal some people will breeze it in two hours, some people will spend two hours on a level.
It more that it’s marketed as a relaxing game, not as a challenging one that will force you to think and react quickly.
I had trouble with Epicycles and most of the orbiting levels because I didn’t quite understand the mechanics of altering orbit in the game just from what I was seeing. I was wondering – does it also work for other particles if you fire motes into them?
(I think I’ll take another crack at Epicycles when I’m more awake…and play it slowed right down.)
on Dec 21st, 2011 at 9:17 pm
I think the main thing about F3A-3 is putting time to MAXIMUM when circulating the orbit. I passed all game on slow/medium time but this level I just couldn’t pass until I learned how to put time to maximum speed. When I did – passed it the same minute
F3C-3 is the only one left to unlock all zones. Find it rather hard but not impossible. Got really close several times but didn’t have enough mass to absorb the central attractor.