I heard about Osmo when it was still a kickstart project. I knew two former googlers somehow has this creative idea to use a reflection mirror to expand the angle and area of the iphone front camera, so player can actually play on a table with a standing iPad only.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=nGfz_vuv9Ac

Anyway, I appreciated its idea and I appreciated it has the preorder promotion even more. When I ordered it, it was just $50 dollars and were told that a set of kit, including the stands , two game board with three iOS games will be available for download. I finally received this ‘toy’ and tested by my son (3.5 yrs) and daughter (2 yrs). I think it is  very creative and fun game to enjoy, even the audience. The first two games , Tangram and Words are fun but also expected. They were both using the same idea which would like players to follow the instruction/ fill in the blank that shows on the screen. I am very surprise of the recognition AI. It is super sensitive, fast but I don’t feel any annoying ‘too sensitive’ moment. Like the Tangram, it will even provide hint like ‘flip’ or reveal the ‘color’ of the puzzle. The Words is very straightforward, but the picture of each objects are so well taken. These pictures are filling up the whole screen with very bright and colorful snapshot. They are both very impressive. For the Newton, it is not easy to review it. I think for me it is beginning to get annoying but still I didn’t becoz it is really a fast pace and not a ‘no clue’ to solve puzzle kind of frustration within. And my son actually spent most of the time on this way. The cool thing of this game is whatever you drew on the paper the the camera can capture, it will becomes a platform for the dropping balls to land on and bounce. The goal is to draw some platform an make the dropping balls hit the bull-eye target hanging in the air. It is really not easy since you are drawing on the table while you have to look at the screen in order to estimate where you should draw the line at a right place. But apparently my son didn’t care about this but have a lot of fun to see whatever he drew was showing up on the screen, plus the balls just keep humorously bouncing until the target is hit.

The only one big thing that I think this game is lacking of is the obligation of the game. As a adult, I really can’t find any hook or system in these games that would make the players want to play more or stick on it for whole day and nite. This may be on purpose not to create too much gaming experience but focus on the ‘education’ part , but I think it is still a miss if it didn’t has this kind of feature built in.

For the price that i paid ($50) , I think it is totally slice. Now it is still selling $70 only and if you buy it from the following link, I will get some credit back too:

https://www.playosmo.com/?r=5492756902313984