Introducing Osmos Multiplayer!

Posted by on Jul 19, 2012 in iPhone/iPad, Osmos | 33 Comments

Dear Motes,

We’ve worked long and hard on this one, and are excited to announce a major addition to Osmos: multiplayer!

This is a free update to the iOS versions of the game, and includes 6 distinct arenas in which players can play against each other — both locally and online — in a mote-eat-mote absorption-fest of skill and strategy. This update also includes iPad Retina support, Twitter integration, and many more audio/visual improvements.

Multiplayer Osmos
Multiplayer details:

  • Play against your friends and enemies, locally (via wi-fi or Bluetooth), or over the Internet.
  • 6 distinct Arenas: Ambient, Impasse, Solar, Warped Chaos, Epicycles, and introducing… Antimatter Impasse.
  • iPad vs. iPhone play supported (for local games only).
  • Optional handicap system to keep competition friendly. Be kind to young motes. :)

So what are you waiting for? Go show your friends who’s boss of the Blobiverse!

Get Osmos for iPad here.
Get Osmos for iPhone/iPodTouch here.

We sincerely hope you enjoy it.
Eddy, on behalf of the Hemi team

33 Comments

  1. liamdawe
    July 19, 2012

    Oh man thats awesome but as an Android user I am a little upset, will it come to Android?

  2. vern
    July 19, 2012

    Any plans to bring this to Android?

  3. Tidus2
    July 19, 2012

    Wow, that looks good! Will it come to the PC Steam version too?

  4. Wow!
    July 19, 2012

    I want you to work hard and make it happen on Android :)

  5. aSi
    July 19, 2012

    …aaaaawesome :) now we need Android version :)

  6. st33d
    July 19, 2012

    goddamit, now I have to buy the iPad version

  7. Ciprian
    July 19, 2012

    Game is not starting on iPad after today’s update, anyone having this issue?

  8. Osmos For iOS Receives Multiplayer Capabilities
    July 19, 2012

    […] Hemisphere Games Image Source: Hemisphere Games /* Tweet !function(d,s,id){var […]

  9. Meal Worms
    July 20, 2012

    @ Ciprian: A small number of iPad 3 users can’t launch Osmos after installing the update. If this happens to you, simply reboot your iPad, and Osmos will run fine. We’re investigating the source of the problem.

  10. Ciprian
    July 20, 2012

    It worked, thanks a lot.

  11. TomH
    July 21, 2012

    Please bring this to PC soon as well!

  12. Malix
    July 23, 2012

    Hope this will eventually apply to the pc-version too. :)

  13. Colin
    July 24, 2012

    The multi-player is fantastic! It runs smoothly as long as you have a good connection, and it never gets old. It’s definitely a lot better than just a few new maps.

  14. juan
    August 2, 2012

    Come on, guys!. Where is the PC update?. Where is your love for those that love you?.

  15. osmosis
    August 7, 2012

    I really want the android version because I somewhow mastered Osmos. I am so close to complete lots of arcade modes and I am pretty bored because of no multiplayer mode.

    P.S. How can you control them? Does it scan your finger or something so it knows which mote to move when which finger is tapped?

  16. eddybox
    August 23, 2012

    Howdy folks,

    First of all, 2.1 is now live on the store, including voice chat and some minor tweaks & fixes (including the one mentioned by @Ciprian).

    As for other platforms, we’re working with Apportable on an Android port. If/when that works we’ll look into PC; but honestly, bringing multiplayer to PC will almost be like starting from scratch, as the mobile and PC versions are so different.

    @osmosis: multiplayer is played across devices — I play on mine, you play on yours. ;-)

  17. Harro
    August 27, 2012

    Hello! Are you planning to put out multiplayer arenas for the OS X aswell?

  18. Cyprian Guerra
    October 3, 2012

    Technical curiosity: Why exactly are versions for various platforms so different? I’m guessing you used some kind of framework and that’s where the whole porting process takes place. Am I wrong? Did you have to actually rewrite the game itself to accommodate functionalities like reading touchscreen and multitouch input or voice chat?

  19. iKintosh
    October 13, 2012

    Please, add multiplayer on the OS X version (in Mac App Store)! Are you planning this?

  20. xgregious
    October 14, 2012

    Amazing game; ++multiplayer makes it my fave game on the iPhone. One major downside, by no fault of anyone, really is the apparent lack of popularity– sometimes it takes forever to find an opponent, if one can be found at all. I’ve wondered about this a lot — The multiplayer action is in a class of its own, so why aren’t there swarms of brave motes trying to get in on the action?

    One theory I have is that there is such a drastic gap in skill level between advanced players and beginners such that newbies give up on the game before giving it a chance. I wonder if some sort of automatic handicapping might keep more players active. This could be the ‘default’ behavior, with the option for more aggressive players to turn it off.

    Another marketing tool that would be useful would be Facebook integration to allow players an easy way to spread the word.

    On a final note… For your devoted ‘advanced’ players, we want more challenges! Multiplayer type play vs smart bots is one suggestion. :-)
    Thanks for listening…

  21. eddybox
    October 26, 2012

    Thanks for your interest, everyone! :)

    To explain why “it’s complicated” on other platforms: we really have two versions of the game. On one hand we have the Win/Mac/Linux versions which are all essentially the same, minus some minor platform-specific differences. When we ported the game to iOS, however, we took a lot of the lessons we learned from PC and redesigned the game: with new level structures, different menus, different achievements, etc. Android is essentially the same as iOS; so, bringing multiplayer from iOS to Android is fundamentally a porting job, whereas bringing it to PC would require adding it to what is essentially a different game.

    Also, as @xgregious has noted, there aren’t a ton of players playing Osmos multiplayer, nor has it really impacted sales of the game besides an initial spike on release. Given it took us about a year to create (about 3 man-years across 4 people), it’s really hard to justify taking the time to do it again on PC, especially since our player-base is much smaller on PC. So, while we’d love to give people what they want, we also have to think about what we’d rather do with a year (or at least many months) of our time: re-invent Osmos multiplayer on PC, which is a bit of a dry task that will likely earn little money, versus work on another game!

    All that said, you never know. We’ll take things a step at a time. In the meantime… next stop: Android!

  22. eddybox
    October 26, 2012

    @xgregious: Thanks a lot for the encouragement and suggestions! It warms our hearts to hear people are enjoying multiplayer. We really put a lot of effort and love into it!

    We’ve given the varying-skill-levels problem a lot of thought. Ideally we’d have “intelligent” matchmaking that pairs up people with similar skills, but that would require an *even bigger* pool of players looking for a game at any given moment. =/

    We considered automatic handicapping as well, but it was a tricky/delicate decision, and in the end decided to leave it in players’ hands. We do suggest (in the pre-arena tips) that strong players use it, and we use it liberally when we play.

    Facebook integration: agreed! We’re currently working on an update for iOS 6 / iPhone 5 which includes some facebook posting similar to what we did with Twitter.

    As for “bots”, they pretty much exist in the Sentient single-player levels. We tinkered with adding them to a multiplayer arena, but found they added a certain randomness that typically unbalanced things for one player more than the other, making matches less “fair”. It also led to less player-player interaction.

    All that said, we’re open to suggestions — especially what we can do to get people playing each other more, in particular expert players! :)

  23. eddybox
    November 5, 2012

    Hey everyone. We’ve been listening to you and thinking about how to add some high-level play/competition to Osmos multiplayer. Here’s our first step in that direction:
    http://www.hemispheregames.com/2012/11/05/l337-osmos/

    Come join the forum and help us define what pro-Osmos tournaments look like! :)

  24. Toni
    December 3, 2012

    I would really, really, love to see the multiplayer in the PC version :(

  25. Freeman
    April 26, 2013

    I finished the game solo, but played multiplayer for the first time last night. It was fantastic ! I can’t wait for the Android version.
    Great Work !!!

  26. eddybox
    May 26, 2013

    FYI, Android multiplayer has landed! :)
    http://www.hemispheregames.com/2013/05/17/multiplayer-comes-to-android/

  27. John
    June 11, 2013

    Just finished the one player version and am exciting to play multiplayer, but I can’t find the update for the version I got from Amazon app store. My app is not shown to have an update available. Should it be available on Amazon?

  28. Harmonex
    November 19, 2013

    Ha. My brother and I have this game (PC) and we were talking about how awesome it would be if it were a multiplayer game. I’m glad to see that it actually is, but sad that it’s not on our platform. The reasoning behind that is solid enough, though, so there are no complaints here. There are other multiplayer games in the sea.

  29. Sfaira
    December 28, 2013

    Still no online multiplayer for Amazon!

  30. Tim
    January 17, 2014

    This game is great, especially when using f.lux at night so it tones down the blue!
    if you don’t have f.lux you may want to download it, just google it or look at on youtube.

    Blue light at night has been proven to keep you awake — the sun has lot’s of it, hence why the sky is blue, that’s just how the light gets scattered!!

    Oh and did I mention f.lux is free?

  31. Juan
    January 28, 2014

    Hi!
    Multiplayer mode doesn’t work for me.
    I’ve tried with a Friend… both in G+… both with Android JB…
    When I invite him, he receive a notification, but Osmos shows no available room to play.
    When he invites me, I don’t receive anything! :(

    What can I do?

    Thanks!

  32. David Madison
    January 13, 2015

    We can’t seem to get multiplayer at all (iPhone to android).

    We can find each other, connect, choose an arena, enter the arena, but right after the game starts we *always* both get the error:

    “Game disconnected”
    “The Blobiverse desync’d”

    We’ve tried many different networks.

  33. eddybox
    January 14, 2015

    @David: sorry to report that iOS and Android cross-play doesn’t work. For more info on the subject, please check out this thread on our forums: http://www.hemispheregames.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=15&t=908&start=0