Exo One is a game about moving throughout different environments. You play as a sphere that can control gravity, you can make yourself lighter or heavier. This allows you to build up immense amounts of speed as you move downwards and it also allows you to fly for extended periods of time or reach great heights. You play as a sphere that can squish itself into a disc which changes how it moves through the air and water. These simple movement mechanics makes transversal throughout the environments into a very relaxing and chill experience. It is a nice experience when you don’t want to think, and just want to turn your brain off.
The movement ranges between wonderfully fun and annoyingly frustrating depending on how well you play. When it works it works well. Moving at a high speed through the environments with a good amount of control is fun. When you are stuck and moving very slowly because you failed to understand how to move properly the game is very frustrating. You get better at controlling the movement as you progress, and the higher the mastery the more fun the game is.
The environments and levels you play through are very varied, and while the presentation is nothing special it is nice to have the constant shifting environments to prevent the game from growing stale. The environment changes up both how the game looks, but also how the game plays, which is really important in this type of simplistic game.
Exo One does not have significant flaws, but the game focuses on telling a story instead of focusing on its arcade aspects. Stats about the fastest speed achieved, highest altitude, level completion time and average speed are all missing; ideally you could compare these against your friends or a leaderboard. The game misses an individual level selection without playing the entire game which hurts the replayability as not every level is equally fun.
If you are looking for a simple chill game that revolves around movement, Exo One is what you are looking for. It feels quite similar to Abzu or Journey in the sense that the journey and environment is very important; however Exo One has a much bigger emphasis on the movement aspects and less on the environmental ones.
I completed the game in a couple of hours, and any replayability comes from playing through the levels again. This is possible to do if you enjoy the movement the game provides. Overall I had a decent experience in that short time, but I have no desire to replay the game.
| Playtime | 2 Hours |
| Game release date | 18 November 2021 |
| Review release date | 27 July 2024 |
| Light sensitivity | No issues, but minor flashing lights and images if you are very sensitive to them. |
| Sound sensitivity | No issues |
| Motion sickness | No issues |
| Steam-link | Metacritic – Metascore (81) |