Osmos, a Physics Game Where It’s Survival of the Fattest

In an era when fashion demands thinness, the video game Osmos, in which the goal is attaining ever greater levels of corpulence, stands as a rare exception. You start the game as a tiny, spherical mote, trying to grow by absorbing even smaller motes, merging with them in order to grow larger and more powerful. But run into a larger body and you will be absorbed, your entity “terminated.” But power doesn’t come for free: The mote propels itself by ejecting part of its own body behind it, shooting away some of its mass in exchange for a push in the opposite direction. It’s a perfect example of Newton’s third law (“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction”) and also makes for a key strategic point in the game: Every move has to be worth the expense.

Osmos includes eight different types of worlds, each of which simulates the properties of a different imaginary but in some ways realistic physical system. The systems range from the microscopic domain of intelligent single-celled organisms to the galactic scale of planets in orbit around