Osmos is a game that reflects the calm, zen philosophy. This much is apparent as soon as you boot up the game and come to the title screen. The music is soft and slow, revealing a gentle ambience that the game picks up on in its art style. The art is best described as fractals in water, but really, it has to be seen to be believed. It's absolutely fantastic and fits the game perfectly. The interface is very minimalistic, with all selections being controlled by the mouse. This extends to the controls as well, which will be discussed later.

Osmos has a very simple concept: you are a mote, and you must absorb other motes to finish levels. Absorption is done by touching any mote that is smaller than you, which you can tell by the color. Blue motes are much smaller, red motes with blue lines are about your size but can be absorbed, and fully red motes can not be absorbed. This same principle applies to other motes as well. So if reaction brings motes in contact with each other, then the biggest will grow layer by absorbing the other. The application of this mechanic to both player and non-player motes help elevate Osmos from casual to difficult in one simple leap.

The controls of Osmos meld seamlessly into the gameplay. The only actual control you have is movement of yourself and other motes. You do this by expelling matter from your core in the direction of your mouse, which makes you smaller and, predictably, gives you a boost in the direction opposite the way you fired. It's much like a rocket, only with more dire consequences. If this particle of matter hits something else, it will be absorbed, as it is just a regular (although tiny) mote. You can also control the passage of time through middle and right mouse buttons, with the middle button speeding it up and the right button slowing it down. Not that slowing doesn't give you any bonus whatsoever.

It's worth mentioning that all the physical laws seem to be in effect here. Collisions, acceleration, conservation of momentum, and others all come into play during the average game of Osmos. For example, you might expel matter to propel yourself in a direction. This matter hits another mote, where it is absorbed and translates its momentum into the mass. You hit the mote you were aiming for, which slows you down as your momentum is now distributed amongst a larger mass. It's facisnating to watch in action and plays a large part in one of the gameplay branches.

Osmos is divided into three gameplay branches that each deserve their own attention. They are ambient, forces, and life. Ambient focuses on simple, clean, puzzle-like gameplay, forces focuses on how different forces can affect the motes, and life focuses on little motes with independent will.

The ambient path, which is the far right, is perhaps the easiest of the three paths to initially get into. The reason for this is the intense puzzle nature of it. There are three branches to the ambient path as well, and each of these paths emphasize a slowness of gameplay. Our personal favorite is the path which is all about utilizing the conservation of momentum to change the environment around you. It's a delightful change from the constant movement of the rest of the game, with the only changes in movement coming entirely from you.

The forces path is much like the ambient path in its branching. There are two main elements in forces, and these are the attractor and the repulsor. The attractor acts much like a sun would, absorbing anything that touches it and causing all of the things around it to circle in an orbit determined by physical forces. The coolest part of this is the orbit trajectory, which can be enabled to show how you are moving around the attractor and how different movements affect your orbit. The repulsor is, much as its name suggests, a repulsor. It is repulsed away from any matter, which makes it the hardest to catch out of any object. It can, however, be tricked into colliding with another mote, which counts as if you absorbed it for the purposes of the goal!

The life path is simultaneously the hardest and the most interesting. The reason for this is that in the last level, the game build a semi-functional ecosystem for you to dominate. To do this, you much eliminate all of the other nemocytes and become the largest in the petri dish, which is no easy task. Nemocytes are relatively simple in that they run from you until they are bigger, whereupon they subsequently movearound and try to collide with you. The interesting thing is that they push themselves like you do, which means that you can grow larger simply by chasing them.

Osmos is a unique game not only through its use of twists in the gameplay mechanic but also in the way the game approaches itself entirely. Playstyles are divided, letting players tackle challenge things in any order, and the difficulty ramps up slowly, which makes the game never feel like a chore. While it has its faults here and there (most notably in speed), it's an absolute blast to play, and a great way to relax after a long, hard day. It is easily worth your $10, possibly more. In short, Osmos is what every indie game aspires to be: cheap, creative, entertaining, and calming all in one go. It's a testament to the power of combining your graphics, sound, and gameplay all into a cohesive whole that leave the player wanting much, much more.

Download the Osmos demo right here on Big Download!