METEREthers hurtling at planet-decimating speeds, luminous balls of hot gas, black holes from which not even light can escape: outer space may be the stuff of nightmares, but for Céline Veltman, a 28-year-old Dutch game creator who spent her childhood stargazing, it is the stuff of dreams. She is translating this wonder of the universe into a video game with the grandest of ambitions: the creation of a solar system. Rocks collide, chemical reactions occur: a planet – and life itself – is born in the depths of the cosmos.
The bright, illustrative images in Curiosmos seem more like something out of a children’s picture book than Terrence Malick, an expression of Veltman’s goals for the project and its timing. “I want everyone to be as excited about space as I am,” he says, speaking enthusiastically about supernovae and protoplanetary disks.
The idea came to Veltman in 2018 while visiting a friend who had two young children. The kids kept pestering the developer to give them her iPad, and Veltman imagined what she’d like them to play: a “silly” game about astronomy, she thought, one that could “make them laugh” while also imparting lessons about the basics of life itself.
As Veltman explains from his artist studio in Utrecht, Netherlands, with sculptures visible on shelves in the background, this quirky space adventure relies on the rock-solid physics and programming of his colleagues, Guillaume Pauli and Robin de Paepe. Curiosmos is a game of interconnected systems capable of producing unpredictable outcomes: asteroids blow away parts of a planet to reveal a molten core; floating clouds create optimal conditions for plant life; before long, strange, ungainly creatures begin waddling. There’s a touch of 2008’s Spore in this primal take on the life sim, but Veltman specifically references games by famed designer Keita Takahashi (specifically Noby Noby Boy and Wattam) as he works with “silly, original concepts.”
Translating the universe’s unfathomably complex secrets into gameplay has proven challenging. “Sometimes I almost regret it,” says Veltman, who relies on his own instincts to decide what crucial information to include. Magnetic fields are out, but debris rings are in. After all, he says with a wry smile, people need to understand that “planets can be fragile too, that they can turn into a big pile of dust.”
Though the subject matter may inspire a hint of existential dread, Curiosmos has been designed to feel comfortable in players’ hands — “a big part of the design,” Veltman says. Throwing asteroids has a pleasing snap, and terrain explodes with a satisfying plop. Veltman, an amateur potter, understands the power of touch. Even Curiosmos’ deformable planets look like they’re made of clay.
Curiosmos also has a personal meaning for Veltman. “During development, I realized that I was saddened by becoming an artist instead of a scientist,” she says. The game is her attempt to reconcile this tension, to “mean something in science by creating art.”
Veltman hopes to have a similar kind of impact (if not size) to the educational YouTube channel. In one wordwhich translates heady scientific concepts into videos of “optimistic nihilism” for 22.5 million subscribers. Curiosmos has a similar energy: it attempts to make the universe’s most bizarre, disturbing and strange mysteries “accessible to everyone.” Perhaps, Veltman muses, it could spark the curiosity of more than a few new astronomers.
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