Indie beginning...

I've been spending some time looking at indie games, and thoroughly enjoyable it has been too, so I thought I would start a series of posts on the subject.

The originality of some of these titles is reminiscent of the early days of computer gaming when, unlike now, you never knew what was coming out next and every game was a whole new experience (although not always a good one, I grant you). Take, for example, Osmos. Simple in concept, beautiful in execution, this game is quite unlike any other that I have played in nearly 30 years of computer gaming. You play a 'mote', a simple cell-like organism floating around the screen, your task to grow by assimilating other, smaller, motes. The catch is that to do this you have to move around the screen, and in doing so you eject matter which reduces your size, with the result that by the time you catch your target mote you may be smaller than it, in which case it is you that is assimilated. With its atmospheric soundtrack, playing Osmos is a dream-like experience that is so far removed from the usual hectic computer games fare as to almost be a completely different type of entertainment. Highly recommended.