A quiet little game
Normally I blog about Wine and Vineyard, but while the meaning behind these two projects are getting an existing Windows program running on Linux, thankfully this is not always necessary.
Now, I'm not much of a gamer, when I actually play something it's usually not for more than an hour, at most. I tend to launch a game, play it for about 10 minutes and then get back to something else, so most of the hollywood fps-shooter/rpg/mmo-hybrids that are released these days never really get the attention they need from me for their mood and storyline to really grap me, luckily I stumbled upon another type of game a while back - for Windows.
You may have heard of or tried the initial stages of Spore or the simple fun of Flow and the game I'm talking about is very much in the same category as these, but in my opinion, a much more capturing and relaxing experience and the good news is that even though this was previously very possible to run through Wine, there is now a dedicated, very-well-ported, Linux version!
The game is, if you haven't guessed it: Osmos.
In Osmos you play a small blob (or mote) that has to eat smaller blobs in order to grow and become the largest in the "blobiverse" and while this idea in itself isn't new, the half-cosmos, half-biology visuals and the great galaxy inspired physics certainly are and give the game a great twist, placing it both in the tranquil, meditative genre and at the same time, due to the physics, the other intelligent blobs and depending on how you play, in the same kind of hectic, tilt-your-entire-body-to-move-your-avatar frenzy that is usually associated with action games. Another point worth mentioning is that Osmos contains music by several artists, with the name of the artist and the track printed at the bottom of the screen at all times. This is a great move by Hemisphere Games and is a welcome respect towards musicians that is seldom seen in the game world.
All in all, while getting Windows-only games to run on Linux is great, supporting properly ported games and programs (and trust me, this is a fantastic port) is insanely important if Linux is to be taken seriously on the desktop and helps prove to companies that Linux is worth supporting.
If you haven't done so already, hurry up and download the Osmos demo and if you like what you see, put your money where your mouth is and support a company that has done a great job at porting a great game to a great platform.
UPDATE: I forgot to link to the article that actually introduced me to Osmos. It's a good read, so don't be afraid of the length.