Orbitals is like one of those vintage one-season anime that you watch on a lark and fall in love with.
Developer Shapefarm’s debut release is more than just a stellar couch co-op adventure:
is a celebration of vintage anime that wears its inspirations on its sleeve. It’s Cowboy Bebop, Evangelion and Sailor Moon stuffed into a high-concept sci-fi story, with lovingly crafted animated cutscenes to boot. And while Orbitals never truly breaks away from these visual touchstones to blossom into a stand-alone masterpiece, it’s aping so many nearly perfect hits that the sugary nostalgia will probably be enough to keep you satiated during the game’s short playtime.
The elephant in the room is Hazelight Studios’ string of award-winning hits, like It Takes Two and
, which have come to define the couch co-op space over the past 10 years. It’s nearly impossible not to compare similar games to Hazelight’s output, even if that seems unfair to new studios just entering the genre.
But Orbitals holds up against the best of the best — probably in no small part because its development team is helmed by ex-Hazelight talent. Orbitals Game Director Jakob Lundgren
that the game would integrate a lot of the Hazelight DNA, but I actually think it positively iterates on that award-winning formula in many ways.
I spent a lot of time standing around and holding down a single button to help out my partner in It Takes Two and Split Fiction. By contrast, Orbitals ensures both players are always zooming through its challenges together, making meaningful contributions to platforming sections or puzzles without lingering too long in one place.
In Orbitals, players step into the role of young space colonists, Maki and Omura, who have spent their entire lives in a stranded space colony ravaged by a mysterious radiation storm. The only thing keeping the folks on the station alive are high-tech respawn machines, named IMs, but the danger is closing in. In order to save their found family (and potentially help everyone escape the wreckage), Maki and Omura travel into the farthest reaches of space to scavenge what they need to survive.
Studio Massket’s animated cutscenes make Orbitals much more charming than other genre fare.
The ’80s anime style does the heavy lifting for a by-the-numbers narrative
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Despite its high-concept sci-fi premise, Orbitals’ story and its characters aren’t anything to write home about — it’s easy to see that they’re loving homages to popular anime series.
The IM respawn machines that bring the main characters back to life time and time again evoke some of Evangelion’s existential horror, though the game doesn’t delve into the implications that much. The spaceships are grimy, industrial and totally Bebop. Main character Maki acts (and looks) a bit like a magical girl, while her partner Omura is intelligent, a bit nerdy and way too prideful, like an endearing mix of Ranma and Spike Spiegel.
It’s regrettable that none of these pieces ever feel like they successfully iterate on those beloved archetypes; the game just copies the best odds and ends from other stories and pastes them piecemeal into this new setting. Orbitals fondly reminisces on the titans of animation yesteryear, and that nostalgia goes far. But most of the game’s narrative beats feel formulaic (and not in a good way). It took me an entire play session to really start engaging with the story; I’m not sure my girlfriend ever fully emotionally engaged with the world at all.
Where It Takes Two and Split Fiction do manage to edge out Orbitals is level design: Hazelight’s best games have players jumping from world to world. Being shrunk down to explore a snow globe is a memorable experience, doubly so when that’s followed up by a perilous journey through an oversize garden. Orbitals mostly offers different flavors of broken-down spaceship to rifle through, and they start blending together once you’ve gallivanted through a handful of wrecks.
That’s not to say that the environmental design in Orbitals lacks charm. The game still offers plenty of gorgeous (and dangerous) vistas to visit throughout outer space, including asteroid field mining settlements, an iced-over power plant, a crackling, lava-filled factory and more. If you end up in an unappealing locale, you can rest assured you’ll be zooming past it soon: Orbitals is short enough that no level overstays its welcome.
The art direction and loving details baked into Orbitals’ DNA are what really hooked my partner and me, and I have no doubt that the little discoveries around every corner will be enjoyable for most players.
If you ever tire of the main story or need a break from the platforming levels, you can divert your attention to the main characters’ lovable purple cat, the little
alien dudes scattered throughout the world or some seriously engaging unlockable minigames.