oom
Omaze was pretty good, but I could never quite wrap my head around the crank direction feeling backwards to me from the action on the screen. But oom? Now oom is totally my jam. It started as DLC for Omaze and turned into something bigger, almost a one-puzzle-per-screen Metroidvania? You’re a little circle-ish again, kind of a spaceship. The design was inspired by wrapping paper at the Bauhaus Museum in Dessau. You’re constantly shooting a series of small projectiles on the beat that propel you forward. You get upgrades to your ship that let you get through obstacles that you can’t pass at first so have to come back later. There’s a pretty sizable map, too, but I never felt lost, and each room was such it’s own thing that you’re good to just keep plowing forward.
It's almost a dungeon crawler, and each room has its one obstacle to overcome. Sometimes it’s an enemy you must defeat, or one you can only escape. It might have walls that move and you have to avoid with rhythm, or a little puzzle to solve before you can progress. One cool thing is that you can fast travel to any room, and it’s always clear where you need to go next.
While researching the things that went into oom, I was reminded of this indie game from 2009 called Osmos. I actually reviewed it at now-dead site Gamer Limit, and my words were saved thanks to the Wayback Machine. In Osmos, you project yourself forward by expelling a small part of your mass, and inertia takes over. Oom also has that idea: shoot backwards to move forward (you don’t change size in oom, though).
It’s a rhythm game where your decisions are made between the beats, with a bit of Crypt of the NecroDancer flair. Like Omaze, it was inspired by another of Gregory Kogos’s hardware-based alt.ctrl games: Skeeper. Unlike Omaze, I was able to turn in the direction I thought I would and actually beat this one. The two games are linked in – as described by the developer – a David Lynch fashion.
I gotta go back and beat Omaze now, don’t I?
(Get it on Catalog. Copy provided by developer.)