Osotos is one of the games by Japanese developer Inufuto using their C like cross-platform engine (called "CATE"), targeted at many 8 bit systems (Osotos, as of this writing, is available on more than 60), most of them Japanese. On systems that don't have hardware sprite chip or a dedicated background music chip (like the Coco's & MC-10), the engine uses tile based sprites, and single voice music in the intro, game end, and between screens. On the Coco 1/2 version, it runs in the equivalent of PMODE 3 (128x192x4), and on the Coco 3 version it runs at 256x192x16 (a narrower version of HSCREEN 2). The games are designed to run from cassette; this means that if you run the Coco 1/2 version from a disk drive or DSK image, you should use a Disk BASIC disabler routine (like ROML) so that the game doesn't occasionally crash or glitch some of the graphics.
Osotos is a combination of a couple of arcade games - Space Panic and Pengo, thus making a unique (as far as I know) game. The game consists of multiple levels and is keyboard controlled. The object of the game is collect all the stars on a level/screen before getting killed or running out of time. The player can not jump, but they can fall from any height. The monsters will home in on the player (and sometimes turn into ghosts and go through floors); there touch is deadly. There are blocks that the player can push to crush them, ala Pengo, and also like Pengo if you push them against a star or the edge of screen, it will break apart and a player can pass them. However, one the block gets destroyed, it will respawn at it's original position on the level (the monsters do not respawn). Since the player can not jump, the blocks are sometimes used to build structures allowing the player to travel between platforms that they can not get to any other way, adding a puzzle element to the game.
It should be mentioned the Inufuto has also released this game for the Coco's cousin, the MC-10. They require a 16K RAM expander, and run at a lower resolution (128x96x4), but play pretty well identically to the Coco versions.
Title: Osotos
Author: ??? (Inufuto?)
Publisher: Inufuto
Released: August 23, 2024 (both Coco 1/2 version & Coco 3 versions)
Requires: Color Computer 1 or 2, 32K RAM (Coco 1/2 version) OR Color Computer 3, 128K RAM (Coco 3 version)
Download Osotos for any platform including Coco's and MC-10's here (click the WAV link for the system you want to get it's cassette file). This is straight from Inufuto's website, and these are cassette only versions. Or, you can:
Download the DSK image (in ZIP format) that contains both the Coco 1/2 and the Coco 3 versions that can be launched by the BASIC program included. (RUN "OSOTOS") to run it from disk.