Cosmic Osmo was created by brothers Rand and Robyn Miller, who went on to form the company Cyan and develop the best-selling adventure game Myst.

An XCMD plug-in enabled VideoWorks animated sprites to be displayed with an alpha mask on top or behind HyperCard's graphic layer.

Both versions were originally published by Activision, but through a breach of contract the rights reverted back to Cyan.

Mark H. DeForest (software engineer and later CTO at Cyan) in December 1995 indicated a colorized version was in development, noting, "...[it] is taking a fair amount of work, but is looking like it will be well worth it.

[6] On August 4, 2010 the game became available for purchase through Steam as part of a bundle that also includes the other Cyan Worlds titles The Manhole: Masterpiece Edition, Myst: Masterpiece Edition, realMyst, Riven: The Sequel to Myst, URU: Complete Chronicles, and Spelunx and the Caves of Mr.

Although Osmo was often considered to be a children's game,[2][8][3][9][10] it was never advertised as such,[citation needed] and people of all ages have declared themselves fans.

The game features digitized voices and sounds that were played by HyperCard's sound commands, and 18 tracks of original CD-DA background music on the Hybrid CD version, much of which was written by Shep Lovick and Robyn Miller and features Kyle Stroud prominently on the saxophone.

[11] Hex Isle was sold exclusively through a website called Fanista Beta, and works on Windows and Intel Macs.