iO Reviews

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 :-)

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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. ★★★★★★★★★☆