Game Music, Reviews

One Big Glob of Sound: Osmos (Review)

December 16, 2011 | | Comment? Share thison Facebook One Big Glob of Sound: Osmos (Review)on Twitter

One of the games that came with Humble Indie Bundle #2, Osmos is an action-based puzzler where you play as a blob of stuff trying to consume smaller blobs before bigger blobs get you. It’s like a katamari ball that needs to avoid larger katamari balls until it’s large enough to grab those katamaris.

Ooh, competitive katamari. That could be fun if you had like 32-player matches.

Anyway, one thing I really loved about this game was its beautiful ambiance. Space is so empty and so full at the same time, and the game’s audio-visual presentation to the player helped express this concept so well.

Keeping in line with the game’s theme of singular large blobs, the studio behind the game released a 50 minute soundtrack as one single audio file available for free. Though the artist and track titles are listed individually while playing the game, you’ll get them all lumped together in your listening experience. So go grab that music file and follow along after the jump.

Here’s the artist information and track titles covered in this individual mp3 file.

Vincent et Tristan – Osmos Theme
Gas – Discovery
Loscil – Lucy Dub
Loscil – Roschach
Loscil – Sickbay
High Skies – The Shape of Things to Come
Julien Neto – From Cover to Cover
Julien Neto – Farewell

Ambient electronica. That’s the name of the game. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Unless of course you hate this stuff, in which case, I wasted your bandwidth. Delete the file and stop reading.

If you’re listening, skip ahead to the 13 minute mark. What you’re hearing is the track from the “epicycles” challenge level in Osmos. This is one of the hardest things I’ve ever played in any game, ever. Period. But there’s something so entrancing about the concept. I’m a body of mass floating around a much larger body of mass alongside a bunch of little blobs I can suck up. I’ll need to get large enough to eventually take out the thing I’m revolving around, because that thing is actually the smallest of 3 “planets” in a simplified “solar system.” And in the end I’ll need to have enough mass to take out the sun, yet I have to expend mass to redirect myself in these circular paths. AH MY BRAIN!

The only thing, the singular trait, about the game that allowed me to keep going until I succeeded, was this soothing audio selection. The cyclical, repetitive nature of the music, various patterns fading in and out over the constant low, heavy bass synth… you can get lost in it. And it’s fun to get lost in.

Now skip ahead to 28:30. Just because it’s ambient doesn’t mean it has to be sleep-inducing. There’s something fun and relaxing about this particular track. There’s a constant presence of fast, bouncy percussion on this one, though it is occasionally drowned out by a heavy synth pad. This part is great to listen to for more active indoor activities: say, working on a craft. Or playing a really hard video game like Osmos.

Ready to get straight up trippy? Head to the 35 minute mark. I’m flooooaaating in a sea of sound. This is one of my favorite tracks from the game. I think it defines the game, and what makes it beautiful. Imagine the black sky with the dotted white stars, and now put in shiny blue and red edges of perfect spheres floating around that same sky, all different sizes. You don’t have to be a geek to think of this as a kind of haven, or even a heaven. Just be a person and enjoy the things you can’t know but you still experience. That’s what this track says to me.

The loudest, most tonal music is saved for the end of this mammoth medley. From the 47 minute mark to the end, you’re going to get an earful of long, sustained chords and crazy rhythmic arpeggiations around a vaguely minor/aeolian scale. And of course, the beat is hot. That’s one thing all these tracks share. I love the beats. I’d like to see someone try to lay a hip-hop track over these. It’d be near impossible. Maybe if you did it real soft or slow, but without being creepy-sexual. Remember that Ying Yang Twins “whisper song” they did? Ugh, gross.

I hope this “review” reflects how I feel about the music. I love it, but it tends to make my mind wander. Share your experiences with this trippy music in the comments below!

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