We recently posted about a bunch of year-end accolades Osmos has received. (Sometimes you just have to toot your own horn I guess. Toot toot!) But some of the articles we’ve come across are… different: philosophical, scientific, amusing…

Here’s a selection of a few of our recent favorites:

• “Think Like a Bacterium: Osmos, Naïve Quorum Sensing, & the iPad” by the Sport Linguist relates Osmos to “quorum sensing” and “technological human enhancement”.
• This “review” by Alexandre Guimond begins with Carl Sagan and ends with how Osmos is “the metaphorical statement of what we have become as a species, and how far we have come to understand the Cosmos.” Wow.
• “Osmos and The Free Market” by Daniel Primed takes an economics slant and compares Osmos to the free market. Interesting… though I guess that raises the question of whether or not our economy is a zero-sum game like the mass in Osmos.

And last but certainly not least, a four panel rage comic summing up the Osmos experience for one player

For those of you that missed it, we “bundled” the iPhone version of Osmos with 5 other indie devs’ games during the holidays to raise money for charity. The result: together we raised $35,134.78 for Child’s Play! Needless to say we’re really pleased with this.

During the sale, we put together some free shwag to thank and encourage people to spread the word: Namely, some free Osmos wallpapers and a ringtone. So, in case you missed them, here they are!

iPad	lock screen	home screen
iPhone4/retina	lock screen	home screen
iPhone/480×320	lock screen	home screen

To install: from your iPhone/iPad, tap on any of the six links above, then tap and hold to save it to your image folder. Then select it in Settings -> Wallpapers. (Note that the lock and home screen selections above are just a suggestion. You can use either/both on whichever screens you like.)

And for those of you that like your ringtones a little… chiller. Here’s a dreamy ringtone from Gas, an excerpt from the track “Discovery” which you may also recognize from the menu screen in Osmos.

Gas Discovery ringtone
Touch to preview on your iPhone/iPad. To install: from your computer, right click (or ctrl+click) to download the file; then in iTunes, drag the file into the Library, select your plugged iPhone, and sync using the Ringtones tab.

Enjoy!

A year ago, if someone had told us 2010 would be a “bigger” year for us and Osmos than 2009, we wouldn’t have believed them. Little did we know that the iOS version of Osmos would be such a success! Sure, we felt we had an amazing version of the game in our hands prior to release, but in a market as crowded as the App Store we certainly couldn’t have expected it.

Anyways, this is the time of year when various reviewers and websites post their end-of-year awards and ask their users to vote on the best games of the year. Happily for us, Osmos for iPhone and/or iPad has received a bunch!

For starters, if you’re in a voting kind of mood, Osmos has been nominated for four Best App Ever Awards. [Edit: voting has closed, Osmos for iPad won Most Innovative Game!] Best Use of iOS Hardware, Most Innovative Game, Best Game Graphics, and Best Game Controls.

And here are the rest. (I’ve probably missed some, so if you happen to spot any not on this list, please let us know!)

• The big momma of all these is Apple’s selection as iPad Game of the Year! Woot woot.
• Macworld chose Osmos as Puzzle Game of the Year!
• IGN awarded Osmos with Coolest Atmosphere and Best Soundtrack of 2010. It was also nominated for Best iPhone Game. “The combination of the exquisite electronic soundtrack, the cool, colorful look of the different motes, and the zen pacing makes Osmos the coolest iPhone/iPad game of the year.”
• IFC selected it not just as a top iOS game, but as one of the top games of 2010 on any platform. Seeing Osmos amongst such titles as Limbo, Mass Effect 2, Assassin’s Creed, Super Meat Boy, etc. is wild! “Rises head and shoulders above so much of the games content to be found on the App Store because of its thoughtful mechanics and abstract presentation. …beautiful and the ambient trance soundtrack transports players to blissed-out interactive nirvana.”
• Osmos has been nominated in this year’s Crunchies for “Best Touch Interface”. These are some pretty far-reaching awards, with other categories including nominees such as Twitter, Facebook, the iPad, Netflix… crazy company!
• Pocketgamer called it one of the ten best iPad games of 2010.
• TouchArcade selected it as one of the best ports of 2010. “Osmos is one of those titles that feels like it was made for a touch screen, and after owning the Steam version on my laptop, moving to the iOS version felt like an upgrade. Really, no matter which version you play, Osmos is stellar from top to bottom.”
• iLounge put out an iOS buyer’s guide, with all kinds of interesting articles and suggestions. They’ve included Osmos in their Top 100 Games of 2010. “Beautiful like a jellyfish tank set to ambient music from a hip lounge, Hemisphere Games’ Osmos challenges you to grow in size to overwhelm or absorb organic blobs in pool- and space-like settings. As soon as you think you understand the action, Osmos introduces the ability control the speed of time, and the challenge of outpacing new rivals. Brilliant and unique…”
• The APPera named it one of the best iOS games of 2010.
• Oh, and while this isn’t a top list, it was fun to read how “people should have wasted their time on” Osmos rather than Angry Birds. “[Osmos] is everything that games too often are not: beautiful, satisfying, sometimes even relaxing. It’s a full PC game shrunk to the iPhone, and there are some gorgeous touches. For example, that popping you feel after using the slow-motion feature and hearing the soundtrack drop in pitch? That’s a new synapse firing off in your head.”

Toot toot!

‘Tis the season… to bundle wonderful indie games! A number of us have gathered together for an iPhone holiday sale in a similar spirit to the Humble Indie Bundle. Here’s the scoop:

• There are six games in the “bundle”, although each are sold separately on the App Store: Osmos, Canabalt, Eliss, Drop7, Solipskier and Spider.
• Each game is on sale for 99 cents! (Normally $2.99 or $4.99 each.)
• 1/3 of all revenue will be donated to the Child’s Play charity.

Visit indiesale.com for all the details, including some sweet new iOS wallpapers and ringtones from the games involved!

Release day. A certain jubilant excitement was in the room. After months of work, we were finally submitting the iPad version of Osmos to the App Store! After a few short simple steps, the room would be filled with high-fives and the sound of caps being removed from bottles.

We filled in the App Store submission form. App Name: Osmos HD, Category: Game, Description: Absorbing awesomeness. We clicked the “next” button and saw the dreaded red font:

Error: The name Osmos HD is in use. Please choose another name.            

Really? That’s odd. How about just “Osmos”? Same result. Our concerns grew; had we taken too long polishing Osmos on iOS? Had someone else already used the name for an app? We searched the App Store to find out what this competing app could be. But in every country, an App Store search for Osmos returned no results. What was going on? A bug in iTunes Connect? We decided to try once more: “Osmos for iPad”, which met with success. Hmmm… ok. We completed the app submission process, punctuated by distracted high fives and hands on chins.

We decided to send an email to appstorenotices@apple.com (the contact point for naming/legal issues on the App Store), hoping to get to the bottom of this.

Hi,

We just submitted our game Osmos (for the iPad) to the App Store.

During the submission, we discovered that the application names “Osmos” and “Osmos HD” are both taken. (Not sure why, as we searched the store and nothing turned up.) As such, we named it “Osmos for iPad”. We would like to name it “Osmos HD” however, and we plan to name the iPhone version simply “Osmos” when we submit it next month. Osmos is a trademark of Hemisphere Games which we have been using regularly since 2008. Could there be an error in the iTunes Connect system? Or perhaps someone is tying up the name?

We received a prompt reply from appstorenotices, stating they had contacted the developers of the “Osmos” and “Osmos HD” applications. This was followed the next day by another email from a certain developer we will henceforth refer to as… The Russian. (Best read with a Russian accent. )

Dear Sir or Madam,

Official part of my message:

At the present time I’m working on the application я named Osmos and Osmos HD. Its development started in January 2010, in 27 March 2010 I was ready to release it and created a corresponding application in iTunesConnect, but due to discovered problems a considerable finishing was needed. So, the name of the application is currently blocked by me, but the application itself is absent at AppStore.

I’m not ready to admit criticism concerning piracy of intellectual property on the following grounds:

1. The term Osmos is commonly used and comes from the Greek word ὄσμος («push, pressure») (see a Wikipedia link)

2. In case Hemisphere Games has a document, confirming registration of the trademark, I won’t release the application under the name of Osmos / Osmos HD.

Anyway unlocking of names Osmos and Osmos HD in iTunesConnect has no legal basis due to the lack of violation of any rights, since my application is currently not offered AppStore.

Personal part of my message:

I admire the Osmos game by Hemisphere Games, and I’m really sorry that our interests have collided. The development had started before Hemisphere Games announced that they were going to port their application at iPhone.

I’m only an indie-developer and my company consists of me only. I understand that if Hemisphere Games presents a claim in the court, they will win the case (since I’m in Russia and Apple and Hemisphere Games are in the USA). [Hemi note: for the record, we're Canadian.]

But on the other hand I think that Hemisphere Games was also a small company in the very beginning. And they understand which problems an indie-games developer faces in the very beginning of his career.

For the present time my expenses for development of the program named Osmos amount to $350, based on my experience of selling previous games I think that the profit from sales in case of release will amount to about $1000 (since I have no money for promotion and advertisement).

In case Hemisphere Games offsets the costs of development and loss of profit, I will drop the proprietary rights for Osmos and Osmos HD.

Amount of compensation is $1350

If Hemisphere Games has any other proposals for solving of our conflict I’m ready to hear them.

Thank you for attention. I really hope we will solve this conflict.

Sincerely yours, The Russian

Ah, extortion. (I particularly like the part that says “I think that Hemisphere Games was also a small company in the very beginning.” Ah yes, Hemisphere Games, the giant multinational. ) It seems that cyber squatting, so popular in the late-90s is once again alive and well on the App Store. Domain name squatting naturally died off after Google arrived on the scene. Now everyone knows that you’re more likely to get the information you need by searching for “milk” in Google, rather than hope that Milk.com has the information you’re looking for. Unfortunately, the name is still vitally important on the App Store.

So, how did it end? Well, some of you may have noticed that Osmos HD actually appears as “Osmos for iPad” on the store. We didn’t want to delay that release. But a few weeks later, when we were almost ready to submit Osmos (for iPhone) we tried the submission process again and – lo and behold – the name Osmos was available! We’re not sure what happened, but we suspect we owe someone at Apple a thank you. [Edit: Actually, we're now thinking it's more likely the developer's submission expired! See Greg C's comment below for details. Thanks, Greg!]

All’s well that ends well. But the message for all you developers out there is: begin an App Store submission early — perhaps you’ll beat The Russian to it.

A lot of people have been asking us if and when we’ll bring Osmos to Android. After all, we’ve already ported it to iOS and Linux, so it should be a no-brainer, right? Well… unfortunately not. We’d like to, but after having spent some time and effort looking into it, we aren’t going to just yet.

There are a number of reasons, but there’s only one that’s truly blocking us: OpenAL support. Surprisingly – especially for an OS based on Linux – Android does not yet support the OpenAL sound library! Osmos is strongly tied to OpenAL and makes extensive use of its pitch-shifting functionality, which most sound libraries (such as SDL) do not support. And since we are not willing to sacrifice the quality and richness of sound in Osmos – not to mention the extra work involved in migrating to a different library – we’re blocked. There is a light at the end of the tunnel however: we’ve heard rumours that OpenAL support is on Google’s roadmap. We’re not sure when, but when it arrives, we’ll get started on the port.

While that could be the end of the story, I think it’s worth pointing out some of our other considerations. None of these are actually blocking, but they do reduce the appeal of porting to Android, and will also limit the audience we’ll be able to reach.

Multitouch: This may be a good time to point out that Android is an OS which extends beyond smart phones and tablets, and device standardization is a bit of a nightmare. Sure, Android may run on your toaster someday, and that’s great – but will your toaster sport a multitouch screen? Regardless, there are already a ton of Android phones on the market that do not support multitouch, and even the OS has been rather half-baked with respect to its multitouch support. It seems that only recently – with OS 2.1 and the latest wave of devices – has multitouch become a proper standard on Android phones. As such, when we do port Osmos, it will only be supported on recent phones and OS versions.

On the subject of devices, I’d like to add that the huge variety of Android phones on the market is a daunting QA and support task. And while it’s easy to say we’ll “just support a few, modern phones” (like the Samsung Galaxy, the HTC Evo 4G, etc.), the Android Marketplace has little infrastructure to support this. Listing all supported devices in the application’s description in not a great nor a foolproof solution; most users do or will not understand the lack of support for their device, leading to a lot of upset customers and reviews. Even the ever-popular Angry Birds – a game with simpler input and resource requirements – has had trouble in this area. Osmos will suffer even more from these issues. I must admit it feels somewhat like opening Pandora’s Box.

Finally, as indie developers who depend on games for their living, we have to ask if it’s worth it financially. Porting to any new platform is a significant amount of work simply from a support, maintenance and PR standpoint; and in Android’s case the actual development effort looks to be significant. And while many point to the growing device numbers and market share of Android phones, we’ve heard that application sales are lagging far behind. Apparently Android phone owners purchase way less software than their iPhone counterparts. Perhaps it’s due to piracy, but I suspect it’s mostly due to the difference in online store integration, and even “culture.” As for numbers, we’ve heard anecdotal evidence that Android app sales are anywhere from 2% to 33% of what they are on iOS. Now, if Osmos were to sell 33% on Android what it does on iOS, we’d be very satisfied. On the other hand, if it only sells 2%… ugh. In the end, if we could reasonably expect 10%, we’d consider that worth our while. The problem is, it may not even hit that modest amount. If any developers out there are willing to share their numbers – in absolute terms or in relative percentages – needless to say we’d love to hear them!!

All that said, we do plan to port Osmos to Android — someday. We have lots of love for open standards and communities, both as users (eg. all our libraries and tools!) and developers (eg. the Linux port of Osmos). So let’s go, Google — bring on the OpenAL support and we’ll be right behind you.

Hello…?

Google……?

Another exciting announcement folks: along with Braid, Machinarium, Cortex Command and Revenge of the Titans, Osmos is part of the sequel to the Humble Indie Bundle! There are a ton of amazing things about this bundle (pay what you want, supporting charity, etc. etc.), but the best – and most entertaining – way to get all the details is to watch this awesome video put together by the fine folks at Wolfire.

Also, big thanks to High Skies for allowing us to include his Sounds of Earth mini-album in the bundle!

So what are you waiting for? HIB2 is waiting for you…