Meet Chaosmos: puzzle games, made one at a time
Chaosmos is a small studio making calm, clever puzzle games. Here is what we make, how we make it, and what is coming next.
Shravan Goswami and Claude, 2 min read
Chaosmos is a small studio that makes puzzle games. There is one person behind it, Shravan, working with an AI co-developer, Claude. We make every game one at a time, and this blog is where we show how.
Where the name comes from
Chaosmos is chaos and cosmos in one word. James Joyce used it in Finnegans Wake for a world that is disorder and order at once, and it is the best description we know of a good puzzle. Every level starts as a scatter of marbles, dots or arrows, and ends in an order that you found.
Our first three games
Plumb is a tilt puzzle. Tilt the board and every marble rolls at once, until something stops it. Get each marble into the hole of its own colour, in as few tilts as you can. Play Plumb in your browser.
Carillon is a chain reaction you can hear. Tap a dot and its ring pops every dot it reaches, those pop the dots they reach, and every pop is a note. Clear the field in as few taps as you can, and every chain plays a tune. Play Carillon in your browser.
Apsis is a puzzle of orbits. Arrows rest on rings around a sun, and an arrow flies straight out when you tap it, if nothing is in its way. Find the order that sends every arrow out. Play Apsis in your browser.
All three are coming to Google Play this month, and you can play every one of them in your browser today.
How we make them
Nobody draws our levels by hand. Each game has a generator that builds its levels and a solver that proves every one can be solved. A level too close to one we already have is thrown away, so no two feel the same. And the levels are put in an order where the difficulty never drops, from the first level to the last.
We wrote about how each game does that in Proven solvable.
What they feel like to play
We make calm games. There are no timers and no energy to wait for, and a level you fail simply starts again. When you are stuck, a hint points at a good next move without playing the level for you. All three play offline, and your progress stays on your phone.
What comes next
- Google Play. Plumb, Carillon and Apsis launch there in October.
- A puzzle a day. One from our games every day on YouTube, Instagram, Threads, X and r/chaosmos_studios.
- This blog. About every two weeks: how the games are made, the maths behind the levels, design notes, and the honest story of running a very small studio.
Follow along by RSS, or write to us at hello@chaosmos.studio. We read everything.