iO

Imagine a game where the character is just a ball the whole time. A ball that isn't even bouncy and can't jump. Consider how difficult it is to implement any platforming that isn't simply clunky and awkward with such a limitation. Now let's think about 99% of platformers. How very annoying and limited would they be if they didn't allow changing directions in midair? It is completely unrealistic, yet omnipresent. I thought about these concepts a lot, and didn't believe it was possible to make a decent game with the mentioned limitations. And yet, here we have [b]iO[/b], and calling it decent would be a huge understatement. So yes, the character is a ball that can roll clockwise and CCW. You don't simply "move right"; the movement happens because of friction. The ball can also shrink and grow (changing its mass) anytime. Arbitrarily changing mass and angular momentum are the only unrealistic things here; the rest is just physics. And oh how fun pure physics can be... As mentioned, rotating allows you to move using friction. The friction also applies to walls and ceilings, allowing you to do not-so-obvious things. Changing mass in mid-air while keeping the momentum lets you change the trajectory (launch yourself). The process of growing in size improves your grip, letting you speed up easier, or... climb some walls! Now, don't forget that you can only grow/shrink so much... And of course, we also get the more typical features of a physics-based game: There are moving platforms. You can push and interact with things in other ways using friction. Portals: speedy things comes in, speedy thing comes out... but what if the thing can change mass? The game is almost flawless (if you overlook occasional clipping through objects in rare cases, which doesn't affect the gameplay). Graphics are very aesthetically pleasing. Won't talk about music, because I [i]rolled[/i] with my own. ★★★★★★★★★☆

It pains me to give this review, but it's necessary to convey my honest experience with this game. Hopefully you take the time to read through this. In a nutshell, iO is the spiritual successor of the flash game wOne, improving upon it with the introduction of a unique mechanic: the ability to grow or shrink your wheel. Armed with this knowledge, you learn different sorts of techniques and use them to gun for the fastest time possible in each stage (235 in total). Even if you get stumped on how to beat a level, the dev team offers several different video guides on the game's techniques plus some levels that are often skipped due to being more difficult to solve the route for. It's clear to me that a lot of passion was put towards this game, and I respect that. However, I can't help but feel that even though the game aiming for a more minimalist approach in graphics and gameplay, it just never felt like enough. Some of the achievements in the game are bugged (such as the 150 bronze/silver medals unlocking early), and the hardest achievements aren't really all that difficult to obtain. For example, the least earned achievement in the game requires you to "Collect a medal in all Impossiball levels", which isn't really all that demanding since you could just get a bronze medal for each stage and call it a day. Another thing is some of the more questionable level design in some of the level packs: there are some stages where it's possible to execute a tremendous skip and essentially beat the level 10+ seconds under the gold time, which I have no reason to believe was intended by the designers. Lastly, the lack of leaderboards is a little bit discouraging, especially since the "best time" could have lead into showing off to other people and consequently motivate competition, thus drawing in a larger crowd. Don't get me wrong, I really enjoyed this game. For a more casual gamer, this might prove to be rather tough to get every achievement in. For seasoned completionists on the other hand, this is super tame. This only took me around 8 hours to get all the gold medals in this game, and now I'm just finishing off the "grow/shrink 10,000 times" achievements (which, to add, I think is quite silly achievement-wise).

A minimalistic puzzle platformer game where the main concept is the ability to shrink or grow your ball in order to navigate through the levels. Gameplay is fun and is broken into levels which gradually get tougher. The background music is very well done. Really easy game to learn but hard to master. Works well on keyboard+mouse or controller. Overall a very fun little abstract game to add to your collection.

A very nice and well-made puzzle game which is both challenging and fun. You control a wheel and uses its ability to shrink and grow to climb walls, drive through loops and do many other cool tricks to guide your way through the level. You have 225 levels to go through and the difficulty increases for each stage. It's one of those games where you just replay the same level 100 times to get the best time as possible. And with the leaderboards to compare your times with other players, it makes you want to improve your time even more. For the price its at now, you'll get a fun and addicitive game that you will enjoy a lot.

Physics platformers, oh how I love breaking you. Having tons of fun speedrunning this game - It has good physics - good strategies - mechanics/bugs/exploits to abuse - Leaderboards with me #1 on them... What more can I ask for <3 If you like solving puzzles - or have a competitive bone in your body defintely reccommend picking this up and challenging me. Goodluck.

One of the most satisfying ball-controlling games I've ever played, and one of the most difficult. iO achieves the odd competence of successfully exploring the change of not just volume, but mass as a gameplay aspect. Plenty of other games let one do this, yes, but most don't offer much in the way of worldforce portrayal to actually render it very convincing or interesting. By contrast, iO does. Very much. The success setup in iO is well-thought-out in my opinion. Get to the end at all and you'll get a reward of some sort; yet, reach it in a particular time frame and it upgrades your achievement. Something for the casual player, something for the gamer. You can probably guess that this game harkens back to video games only being video games in this way: There is no stated story or lore. This wheel has no reason to be in the space it's in, nor do the tracks and obstacles and portals and whatnot, other than to serve for being there. -- The only main con I can think of isn't with iO itself, but with Gamious. They seem to pay iO little mind; their own website, when I went, didn't display it, and a PM to them asking about other releases- namely a DRM-free one - yielded no response. I have my fingers crossed they still have this in their heart, because as far as world-force games go this is an impressive one that does well as a game. I recommend iO if you're fond of world-force games. Your call on the price; I'd like to point out plenty of candy bars each cost the same and won't entertain for nearly so long.

For a game this simplistic, the mechanics/controls would have to be really good for it to be a fun game. Sadly, they're not. The game isn't too bad, but with all the great games out there, it's not good enough to keep me playing. Also, [b]heads up to anyone with a 144hz monitor:[/b] You will have to set your screen to 120hz or lower, in order for the game not to stutter like crazy! The devs knew about this while the game was in development, but didn't fix it, partly because they meant it affected a small amount of players.

It was a peaceful enough three hours, and some of the puzzles took a few minutes, but many of them took practically no time at all... it's not really a puzzle if you just have to hold down the Move Right key, for example. As it stands, therefore, although I finished it, I wouldn't really recommend it. I was mostly playing it while holding conversations and watching TV, so it's not like it requires desperate focus.

A side-scrolling platformer where you control your spin and size. Nice, abstract graphics, and nice music. The combination creates very good and chill atmosphere. Playing with a gamepad, controls are good. The only minor issue I have is the long time it takes after finishing a level to get to the result screen.

9.5/10 - addictive and enjoyable. You'll want to play it through till the end and then wou'll probably want to improve the times. So there's a lot of work waiting for You here :-)

Beautiful minimalistic graphics and audio, but most importantly, enjoyable and creative physics based puzzle platformer. Quite underappreciated for what it offers. In iO, you're a wheel, a very clever and fast wheel.

With many hours of gameplay invested, I can assure you that this game will NOT dissapoint. It is an absolutely AMAZING (and addictive) Physics based game that will test your reflexes and ability to solve puzzles! What you see is what you get, and it is as fun as it is challenging. It has many different gameplay mechanics, intential gameplay bugs to exploit, and you can even finish seemingly linear puzzles in many different ways. It will keep you trying to get those gold medals: .02 seconds of? Try again! The gameplay is intuitive to learn, and most of the mechanics are very intuitive (Though some will require some practice to get used to), and you will also spend time trying to beat puzzles through trial and error. Eventually you can form a knack for virtually any puzzle and use your experiences to beat other puzzles. Many of the longer puzzles will incorporate several different mechanics all at the same time to give you an exceptionally difficult time, though once you complete them (With a gold medal especially) it is very rewarding. This is a must buy for any puzzle, physics or skill lover.

The phisics of the game make it really intresting to see what each new element does. The puzzles are intracate enough to be mentally challenging, but they are not too hard.

Good, but feels inconsistently hard. As in, the difficulty of a level almost feels random, rather than getting progressively harder as you go through the ranks.

This is one of those games where completing a level feels very satisfying and motivating to keep going. It requires you to develope a good amount of skill with the basic concepts provided as you succeed in more and more of the challenges. Figuring out the puzzle of the basic layout of the level isn't the hard part here. It is more about understanding the consequences of shrinking and growing (and thus changing mass) at an instant applied to a rolling object while the rest of everyday physics is kept the same. By doing so you get a feeling of how momentum is connected to mass and how it acts on the velocity of an object. The level design incorporates these new mechanices in some surprising ways. And you can test if you truly master the mechanics by aiming for the optional medal rewards that are given for beating a stage within a time limit. Ultimately I can recommend this game to all who seek a good challenge and don't get frustrated all too easily. Even for the latter kind there is an option to skip levels and return to them at later time. The only negative thing about this game is perhaps that it sometimes doesn't keep up the level of challenge and throws in a couple of trivial puzzles every now and then at the later stages.

Play as a mechanically articulated, tesselated wheel structure configured for variable-radius. From an unseen, orthogonal mechanical linkage providing 2 degrees of freedom, an axial mount point delivers tubes for pneumatic injection of liquid gallium into one of two systems; the segmented, reinflatable, toroid vesicle which provides internal pressure to adjust the radius of the structure with the side effect of adding mass, or to the torque converter for tangential acceleration of the entire mechanism in unison. Coupling these controlled mechanical forces with an exceptionally high friction coefficient around the circumference of the mechanism permits an operator to explore seldom studied facets of Lagrangian physics with a focus on momentum and Coriolis effect.

Just a small game to kill some time with. The mechanics are alright, the levels just challenging enough. The music is also good... It's something you would rather play on your smartphone, but still provides enough fun on PC. Good game, definitely worth the price, even without sale.

iO is a criminally underrepresented game here on Steam. I never thought a puzzle/platformer/racer with no jump button would be at all enjoyable, but I was wrong. The physics are clever and slightly exploitable, the level design is clean and simple, the controls are functional, and the soundtrack is soothing, to say the least. Anyone interested in any kind of platform or puzzle game should definitely pick this up. Now, if there was Steam Workshop support with custom levels, that woud just make it even better. Let's hope that's in the pipeline somewhere!

what an awesome game!!! so much fun an everything trimmed to the essentials. love it and can lose myself for hours. only negative point is you cant disable sound effects. anyway totally worth the price.

Great game idea, but lacks the execution in general. It's badly optimized, level progression is extremely slow and all in all - it's just not a great game.

Fabulous! I love this game so much. It's like a super fun action fictional physics game. It follows the law of conservation of momentum (linear and angular) but it ignores conservation of mass... This is such a brilliant way to make a college level Physics 1 student get confused to failure, but at least it was super fun in the way... By the way, I purchased this game on my iPad 2 and iphone 4 and it works terribly! so play on a real computer or lastest models of iPhone/iPad only.

Linux friendly, super addictive physics game. Plays fine on integrated Intel 4000 HD graphics. More to it than just inertia, which makes it more complex than it first appears. Running well on Mint 17.1 Cinnamon.

Unfortunately the game is not good. The main reason is it's mechanic, but not in the sence of itself, rather than in the impact it has on the controls. The ball is spinning. And therefore it has angular momentum which is extremely hard to control and especially frustrating to predict it's influence after making a move, For example, you spin up, jump and when you land the momentum screws your controls heavily. Otherwise the game is nice and interesting.

At times when you have only two minutes of leisure time but also don't want to sit doing nothing, this is a game to pick (if you are not into mobile games). Each level is about 30 second puzzle.

Brilliantly simple to control. Mind-bending level design to keep things interesting and challenging. Recommended to anyone who likes out-of-the-box puzzle/physics games.

I like the game but i got a new computer with a nvidea gtx 1070 but for some reason it ran better on intergrated graphics any sugestions

Nice puzzle game, good entertainment for the price. The puzzles where well thought out. It's based around a simple premise: you are a ball that can spin around it's own axis, and you can change your size (and with it your weight). For example, this allows you to go from heavy to light (so you can launch yourself) or from small to big (to hold on to the walls). They take this one mechanism and really explore what you can do with it. It reminded me of Portal, where you basically have one mechanism, and the game is playing with that mechanism in many ways. This game does that with a size-changing ball. I feel the difficulty was good. Most levels I got before they got frustrating, but it was never easy to get a gold medal. The graphics look good, and the game ran fast. The only problems I had were with the controls. For one thing I never managed to get my XBOX (original) controller to play nice on linux (I haven't tried on windows). The other problem I had only happened in 3 levels with complex manouvering while using a USB keyboard. It seemed like the controlls stopped working part way through. I got a PS2 keyboard and this stopped. I think it might be due to n-key rollover. This means those three levels could be frustrating if you are playing with a USB keyboard. Besides those three levels, I had no problem using the USB keyboard. iO took a fun idea and used it well, I look forward to the developers next game.

Logitech F710 controller doesn't work at all, not out of the box and not with xboxdrv either. The controller setup in the launch window is completely useless, it contains an infinite list of controllers and axes but no indication whatsoever as to what they actually do. The controller works out of the box with all other games, even Wine games, so the issue is definitely only with this game.

I am very impressed with this game. XBox 360 PC controller works perfectly. Game runs smooth. Clean graphics. Very pleased with this game!!

little starway bullshit puzzle test of patience fuck this game lol. one puzzle ruins the game

Nice try but didnt work for me , tedious, illogical physics and WARNING controller not supported

Nice concept, but very awkward control responsiveness, coupled with a need for very precise control, that made it next to unplayable on linux. Also has some very wierd "physics" sometimes. 4.999 / 10, Sorry. Almost.

Do YOU have an insatiable hunger for physics? No? Oh. ok...Never mind... How about gold? do you like gold? Just silver? Well stop pooping on my parade and buy the damn game! It's relaxing. It's rewarding. it's challenging. it's totally worth full price, even though I paid $1.25 for it :3

If you enjoy grinding out your gameplay then this is for you. Its good. Wish the gold medals were easier. Frustation sets in after too long on the same level trying to beat it. But for gameplay this is fun. Another game i will never complete 100% though.

unique, fun, adicitive, challenging, will make you think. did the world shrink or the orb grow. its a a game of perspective. the reward another test

i'll keep it short. Atomosphic and challenging yet very relaxing. One of my all time favourite games and soundtracks. Easily Worth more than $5.

nice platformer with simple rules. the levels use physics to give it a lot of depth and keep the gameplay new.

an extremely simple puzzle game, not worth much money but is recommendable.

i bought this game and it's good! Low Replayability Though.

Awesome game! great representation of physics and hard but just cant stop playing! :)

Really nice puzzle game - fun for inbetween :)

It's a SUpppppppppppppppppppppppppper Funnyyyyyyyyyyyyyy Game, Love to play it on free time :D

I mean it's fun when you're already depressed

It's a nice casual game with interesting mechanics

BUGS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Speed to high = ignor wind

It's a great game and a good game for thinking

Good game, Pretty challenging, love the game 10/5

nice game ! so adictive :D

haha ball go nyoom

best game ever