Comments on: Game Recommendation: Osmos

By: James

James — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 18:23:40 +0000

I bought this game on your recommendation after your blog entry – only played it with my girlfriend today. I love it and so does she. Hoping it will run on my dell mini, which I will try when it comes back from repair.

Many thanks

By: Esquar

Esquar — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:44:25 +0000

I’m a bit further in now, and it’s starting to remind me of Oracle Billiards, which I didn’t expect.

By: Joe

Joe — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 19:09:01 +0000

Amaing game. Please keep recomondations coming.

Also, because I have never posted here before I have to say Braid was one of the finest games I have played this generation. Soundtrack was literaly perfect.

This game is great and let us know what else you think is worth it out there.

By: Alexey

Alexey — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 03:33:24 +0000

I bought the game, even though I was initially skeptical of your description. It was in the “final” levels, when one really has to perform, that I started clearly recognizing problems in rocket propulsion and gravitational slingshots that I only read about. Thanks for the tip.

By: munchybot

munchybot — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 19:42:53 +0000

I have to buy this.

By: JP

JP — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 02:25:49 +0000

“Comprehensiveness” is an interesting term for the idea, probably better than “depth” which has acquired too much baggage.

I think the fact that many indie games are gimmick-driven and/or seem to be remiss in exploring the idea(s) they purport to explore stems partly from their goal of being quick to make, easy to play, instantly appealing things that you want to try after seeing a single screenshot on TIGsource. They’re the two minute punk songs, that take half a day to record and cut, of our medium.

That’s great and makes them a fine counterpoint to turgid, unambitious AAA games but one can’t help but feel there’s another axis to be explored. And a bigger budget wouldn’t advance that in most cases. Development time, and the frequency with which an artist puts out new work, may be a better metric – when you take a year or more to make a game, you’re often putting more deliberation and care behind every atom of it, even compared to someone totally brilliant who releases something every month.

Me, I just want more indie games that aren’t shmups or platformers. Seriously, those things are so easy to make, and there are many bloody fantastic ones, but those design spaces have been mined so thoroughly… where are all the turn-based indie games? All the indie abstract puzzle games?

By: Colter

Colter — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 01:49:35 +0000

And I just thought I had my game budget worked out, too. Thanks.

But really, thank you. I can always count on insightful opinions from your blog, and every game recommended by you that I’ve tried has been worth the play time… more than I can say for quite a few games on my shelf.

Just playing the demo has me interested. In a lot of ways, this is just a fancy flash game, which is having the expected pyschological effect of a reluctance to pay any money for it. I’ll probably break down and buy it in a month or two, and enjoy it fully.

By: increpare

increpare — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 23:07:31 +0000

Your point about my use of the word ‘comprehensiveness’ acknowledged and broadly agreed with.

By: Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:43:39 +0000

Also, I don’t think I would characterize it as a “lack of comprehensiveness” because I don’t think it’s really comprehensiveness that is necessary. For any particular subject matter, there is some amount of exploration that counts as “enough” — if it’s a very rich area, then “enough” might be well short of comprehensive; maybe comprehensiveness would be impossible because the game would be too hard to make or too complicated to play or because the subject of exploration would be too defocused.

However, I don’t see many indie games having that problem…

By: Jonathan Blow

Jonathan Blow — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 22:40:51 +0000

Jim: I don’t know what was in the demo, but I played the IGF submission way back when (which might be comparable to the demo), and liked the full version a lot more. I find it hard to see this as an evolution game since evolution implies change in the inherent structure of an organism, and there’s no such thing in this game. Competition for resources, though, sure.

increpare: I see what you are saying, and at that point it just comes down to personal tastes, I suppose. I personally don’t get very much out of the games I am alluding to. I see what they are offering, for the most part (at least I think they do) but it’s generally not something I find compelling. Or rather, sometimes I find them just on the edge of compelling, or within a stone’s throw of compelling, and I see where they could have gone, and they just didn’t go there.

In the same way that I don’t want to play unthoughtful big-budget AAA action games, I also find myself not wanting to play unthoughtful indie gimmicks. That may sound paradoxical coming from the guy who hosts the Experimental Gameplay Sessions every year, but there you have it.

See, it’s the thoughtful part that is valuable, not the gimmick part. (Mostly.)