As you may already know, we released the Mac port of Osmos a little over a week ago, which was done by our good friend, Aaron Barksy. Aaron makes a damn fine homebrew, is an intrepid outdoor adventurer, and — as it turns out — is an awesome and dedicated developer to boot. Little did we know, however, of his long and dark obsession with… the video game.

Here (with his approval), is a blog entry from “the man behind the port”…

Video Games

As a child I loved video games. No really, I liked video games more than just about anything else in life. I grew up in the golden age of arcade machines and I spent hours watching people play Pacman, Donkey Kong, Tron, Mr. Do, Mario Bros. (just the regular, not the super), Spyhunter, Dragon’s Lair, and many others. And when I say I loved video games more than anything, well, here’s a few examples.

In grade 2, I had a huge crush on Leah Hilson. My very generous sister somehow managed to arrange a playdate over at her house on my behalf. I went over to Leah’s house and her mom asked me what I wanted to do, listing the swimming pool, treefort, board games, and the Atari. Bingo! I sat and played Pitfall for 6 hours and didn’t speak to Leah once.

When I went on ski vacations with my family, the lodge had an arcade on the second floor. Many days I would claim I didn’t feel like skiing in the beautiful Wasatch mountains and instead spent the day hanging around the arcade watching people play video games. Of course there was always that dead time between 10 and 3 where everyone was out skiing and there was no one playing in the arcade and I didn’t have any quarters. But I didn’t mind. I’d just watch the endless 15 second loops of sample game play that the machines used to lure you in.

During the summer holidays, there was nothing I liked better than to bike to downtown Burlington and spend my day hanging out in the Golden Nugget Arcade. It was a dark, grimy, smoke filled, heavy metal playing, drug dealing pit. But I couldn’t be happier than when I was hanging around there watching video games. Every so often, I’d find a quarter on the floor, or a leftover credit on the machine, and then joy of joys, I actually got to play video games.

Naturally I wanted a home system so that I could play video games all the time. I really hoped that my mom would buy me an Atari, or a Colecovision, heck I would have even settled for a Vectrex. Instead she got me a TRS-80. Unlike the previous consoles I mentioned, the TRS-80 actually had a full keyboard, and a pretty good embedded BASIC system so that you could learn something about computers. You could even play great games like Dungeons of Daggorath.

This attempt to sneak something educational into my life was surprisingly effective. Rather than spend money on expensive games, my mom bought me a book of code listings. Yes, I could play a game if I just first transcribed multiple pages of dense BASIC code onto the computer. Luckily you only had to type all the code in once, so long as you had an attached tape recorder to save your work. Any boombox would do, so long as it had a record button. Old BASIC code is terrible. Rather than naming the slots that store your scores with descriptive names like PlayerScore and HighScore, the severe memory restrictions of the computer meant that these slots would be called PS and HS, or as was often the case AA and BB. So it wasn’t easy to learn anything from transcribing these listings, but I did get a sense of how to branch execution, assign values, and abuse GOTO statements.

In High School I started taking some programming courses. But I was bored with all the data structures and information processing. I wanted to make video games, and you couldn’t easily access the graphics hardware from Basic or Turbo Pascal. So I purchased a copy of Borland’s C++ and learned to program by reading the manuals that came with the compiler. Ouch. Later I found a great book on graphics programming, and wrote a few games using the secret Mode X VGA resolution of 320 x 200 (just a wee bit smaller than the iPhone’s resolution of 320×480). Then it was off to University, with dreams of becoming a great programmer, and hopes that I might one day work for a real video game company like Blizzard.

Sadly, in University I was exposed to women, socialists, and scientists, and my dreams of becoming a video game programmer started to crumble. Instead my 20s saw me through a string of useful, but dull programming jobs:

• Writing scheduling software for Inco - oh the girls are out to bingo and the boys are getting stinko and there’ll be no talk of Inco it’s a Sudbury Saturday night. Yes, that Inco.
• Writing cash register software, or point of sale software as we liked to call it.
• Working for the investor ripoff con ModernGroove.com.
• Writing a filter to import Outlook 2000 mailboxes into Outlook 2001.
• Writing plant control software for Lehigh Cement.
• Writing translation filters to import data from PeopleSoft into Business Objects.
• Developing visualization software to overlay microarray data onto protein interaction networks (yes Masters degrees are fun.)
• Writing software for high throughput analysis of flow cytometry data.

I was once offered a job to develop a massively multiplayer online 3D game. But as it turned out, that game was poker, and I didn’t really fancy getting involved in online gambling. In the meantime, Eddy, game designer extraordinaire, had been busily working on his hobby project Osmos. I played some early prototypes in Montreal and thought it was pretty darn fun, but when I saw the finished project I was blown away. I knew I needed to be a part of it. Luckily at that time, Eddy was nearing a total breakdown, and he was happy to offload some of the work. And so it was that I quit my cancer research job, and finally returned to the dreams of my youth to program video games. I’ve spent the past 2 months furiously working on the Mac version of Osmos, and it has now been released! But this time, I didn’t skip any ski days for video games.

Addendum: I should point out that the finished product was incredibly awesome, thanks not only to Eddy’s work, but also the rest of the team, Dave, Kun, Andy, and many more.

Thanks, Aaron!

We’re excited to announce that the Mac version of Osmos is now available! Our Mac-guru (and fine backcountry skiier), Mr Aaron Barsky has done a bang-up job on the port, and it’s been running smoothly on a wide variety of machines.

Our “official” minimum requirements for the port are:

• Mac OS X 10.4 or newer, Intel and PowerPC
• Processor: 1.0 GHz
• Memory: 512 MB RAM

As always, the best Osmos experience is to play with a 3-button mouse, but we’ve made sure it plays well with just a trackpad and keyboard for all the Macbook users out there. (Check the in-game control menu for details.) So, head on over to the Osmos page and get your Mac Osmos on.

Oh, and remember, for those of you who have purchased the PC version from Hemisphere, the Mac version is already yours — just follow the link in your original purchase email. (We’ll send you all a new one in the next day or two in case you’ve lost it.) And for new players, we’re still offering our $10-deal for both the PC and Mac versions together. Enjoy!

Things may have seemed quiet of late on the Hemisphere blog, but we’ve been busy behind the scenes. The Mac port is nearing release, Dave got married(!), I was on the road for several weeks, and we’re almost finished another “secret port”. (More details on that soon.) In that time my ambient gaming inbox has filled to the brim with a bountiful harvest. I’ve taken a few peeks and nibbles, and am really excited to sink my teeth into them over the coming weeks. I’d like to share a few with you. Specifically…

Machinarium. For those who have played Samorost 1 or 2, you’ve been waiting for this one, and have likely already picked it up and thoroughly enjoyed it. For those who haven’t, expect one of the best point-and-click adventures ever, with beautifully textured environments, incredible ambient/dubby music, and tons of charm. Try the free demo and fall in love.

Eufloria (the game formerly known as Dyson) is an ambient RTS about asteroid colonization. The minimalist beauty of this game, graceful swarming of seedlings, and beautiful ambient electronic soundtrack by Brian Granger are all so peaceful that it’s easy to overlook the elegant strategy and conflict at the heart of this game. It doesn’t hurt that Rudolf and Alex, the developers behind Eufloria, are great guys as well. Try the demo and then get the full game.

Windosill. I only recently discovered this gem by artist Patrick Smith. It’s a whimsical series of “puzzles” through an elegantly physical world which follows its own internal logic. This is interactivity and exploration for the pure pleasure of it, and the life that Smith brings to these inanimate objects through his procedural animation is a delight. The first half is free, but at $3, activating the full version is a no-brainer.

Auditorium was just released on the iPhone. I don’t own an iPhone/Touch yet, but when I do, this will be one of the first apps I’ll buy. It seems like a perfect fit for the platform, with its meditative, bite-sized, musical gameplay. In the meantime, if you haven’t tried it yet and you too are iDeprived, there’s the still-wonderful, original PC version.

Well, it’s Sunday evening, and I believe this is the perfect time to enjoy some of these chill new toys. Happy ambient gaming everyone!

ps. If anyone out there has enjoyed a recent ambient gem that I’ve missed, please suggest away. Thanks!

Dear Motes,

It has been an unbelievable year. The amount of recognition Osmos has received over the past six months is blowing our minds. Here’s the latest: Osmos has been nominated for “best independent game” in Spike’s annual video game awards, alongside ThatGameCompany’s Flower, Twisted Pixel’s ‘Splosion Man, and RedLynx’s Trials HD. Incredible. It is truly an honour for us to be in such fine company.

The winner will be determined by the VGA board and fan voting, so head on over and vote for your favorite game! The decision will be announced live on the VGA show, which will air on December 12th at 8pm on Spike TV.

The wait is nearly over for all you Mac users. (And there are a lot of you…) Aaron just handed us the first version of Osmos for Mac, and it is sweet, buttery smooth, and oh so tasty.

We still need to beta test of course, but that shouldn’t take more than a couple of weeks. So… expect a release about a week into December!

Last weekend was the festival and conference known as IndieCade. In previous years it piggybacked on top of a few other shows, including Siggraph and E3; but this was IndieCade’s first ever standalone festival. And what an amazing time it was. The location, a beautiful pocket around a hotel in Culver City, was warm and charming — by far the best impression I’ve ever had of LA. The games were a great selection of fun, thought-provoking, wacky, and sublime. All indie of course. The talks and discussions were varied and interesting. And the people…

The people.

I fell in love with the people. Last weekend, a cozy little corner of Culver City became a magical place, inhabited by some of the most genuine, interesting and kind people I’ve met in a long time. And for so many of them to be in the same place at the same time, and not diluted within the structure of a larger event, well… I’ve never seen anything like it. I would start naming names and thanking all the wonderful people we connected with (and I believe, befriended) over the course of the weekend, but the list would go on and on and on…

I’m somehow reminded of the words of Hunter S. Thompson:

San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not… but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant… You could strike sparks anywhere… we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.

The energy of last weekend truly struck me. It wasn’t about “the lack of X, Y and Z in the mainstream industry”; it was simply a group of like-minded, fun, and creative people — gathered together to share their experiences, their ideas, their love of games and what they can be.

For those who weren’t there, the event will appear on a number of gaming sites and blogs, creating a small ripple in the ocean of (indie) gaming news. But for those who were there, IndieCade was a grand and inspiring experience; and for a time, Culver City became an indie celebration and a joyous, intimate community.

And oh yes, allow me to share the icing on this fantastic cake: Osmos won the IndieCade “Best in Show” as well as the “Fun / Compelling” awards, for which we’re honoured and super grateful! Wow. It’s really been an amazing year for us. Big congrats to all the award winners and finalists. Lots of great games in there…

To Sam, Stephanie, Celia, Robert, Robin, and everyone else who generously gave their time to organize this wonderful event: thank you so much! And to everyone else, (at the latest,) see you next year!

- Eddy

ps. for more of our IndieCade photos, visit our facebook album.

Some more festival excitement: Osmos has been selected as an IndieCade finalist!

“The finalist games are the heart and soul of the IndieCade 2009 Festival. More than two-dozen finalist games are available for gameplay and, whenever possible, gamemakers will be nearby to discuss and demonstrate their innovative games.”

And if you’re looking for the complete list of finalists, Edmund McMillen handily leaked ‘em here.

See y’all there!

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!

Another week and the glowing Osmos reviews continue to flood in. A sampling:

4.8/5 - “I believe I’ve run out of adjectives to describe this game. From start to end, it is a fluid mass of gaming goodness… I can say nothing better than go, go now and purchase this game. I think you’ll find that Osmos is truly unlike any gaming experience you’ve ever had.”   -Jay is Games

91 - “It’s moving in every sense of the word.”   -A.V.Club

9/10 - “addictive and emotional and singularly satisfying… lush, organic… Osmos should be a shoe-in for consideration as 2009’s casual game of the year.”   -Ace Gamez

Read more new reviews on the Osmos page.