Video game number seven: Osmos

Game review number seven in my 365 Games in 365 Days project is "Osmos".

I decided today was the day to try out another arcade game...and that game was Osmos. I had never even heard of this game, I just noticed it in the list of Games for Windows downloadable games with achievements and after reading a few good reviews, decided to give it a spin.

This game is great.

Another physics-based game, this one reminds me of a cross between Geometry Wars and Asteroids, with the best elements of both included.

You are a little ball of energy...and you have to travel around space absorbing smaller balls of energy simply by touching them. Every other "life form" you absorb makes you that much bigger. Unfortunately, to travel....you must expel a little bit of yourself as propulsion. You can travel slowly with a quick click of the mouse and lose only a little bit of your size, or travel quickly by clicking furiously (or holding the mouse button down). Getting across the screen in a hurry can cause you to lose a lot of your volume...and you may find that the big target you were rushing over to absorb is now bigger than you are (and hence, can kill you).

That's the game in a nut shell. The goal of most levels is to become the biggest ball on the screen. There are variations to keep it interesting, including levels with other "enemies" who also travel around the screen aggressively absorbing all the smaller characters like you. My biggest gripe with this game is around the save system. You can get through an incredibly challenging stage, but if you don't beat the two stages following it....you won't reach a save point. This forced me to replay a few levels that I only beat by the skin of my teeth the first time. It was kind of fun the first time, but the second time through, it was grindy.

I played through about 10 levels of this game, grabbed a few achievements...and called it a day. It's fun, it's challenging and I imagine I'll be coming back to this game in the future, perhaps while I'm on a conference call at work.

Overall rating: 7.5 out of 10 (it would have been an eight if it wasn't for the lack of save points).

Achievements I scored: