First Impressions
Orbitals is shaping up to be a charming co-op romp
Pros
- Incredible art direction
- Charming characters
- Great platforming puzzles
Cons
- Early space-faring segments were a little clunky
Shapefarm isn’t a developer you may be very familiar with. In fact, if you visit the Tokyo-based studio’s website, only one game is listed. But while Orbitals may be Shapefarm’s first original title, the team has been around since at least 2013, working as a co-dev and support studio on games like the ill-fated Devil’s Third, led by the late Tomonobu Itagaki, and 2020’s Samurai Jack: Battle Through Time — a game on which Itagaki was credited as “Supreme advisor.”
While Devil’s Third might be most kindly described as a novel curio, Orbitals is not without pedigree. The game’s director, Jakob Lundgren, has worked as a designer and level designer at Hazelight on similar co-op adventures like A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction, and the creative director, Marcos Ramos, acted as an art director on Samurai Jack. The influence of both Lundgren’s co-op gameplay-first background and Ramos’ art influence shines through immediately as soon as you see a second of the game in action.
Orbitals features a gorgeous art style.
Feeling a bit animated
Orbitals is a co-op action-adventure 3D platformer inspired by eye-popping ‘80s sci-fi anime. From the game’s heavy film grain to character movement animated on the two, it’s clear what kind of vibe Shapefarm is going for. It is easy to wind up sounding hyperbolic when describing this art style, because it really does look incredible in motion. Despite being a fully 3D-rendered world, the stark pen-like outlines on models and characters give everything a purposefully flat look. The faux-2D-animation effect is so successful it kind of broke my brain a little bit upon first seeing it paired with not only my own camera control, but that of another player on the other side of the split-screen.
The split-screen divide facilitates the existence of our two protagonists. The young and rambunctious Maki is paired with the also young, also rambunctious (and slightly nerdier) Omura. The segment I demoed picked up at the start of the game; after a small glimpse into these characters’ tragic past, we were whisked away to 15 years later as they prepare to adventure beyond the Storm Wall that protects the space colony.
The first thing I noticed was just how joyful the act of moving in Orbitals is.
Things start out very simple as you get to grips with controls; Maki and Omura’s grand spaceship is a bit of a “piece of junk”, and needs repairing before we can get going, so my co-op partner and I wandered around the space station for a bit getting things set up. The first thing I noticed was just how joyful the act of moving in Orbitals is. Omura runs with one hand perpetually stuck in his jacket pocket and the other swinging wildly, while when Maki starts descending stairs, she begins to tiptoe down with her arms outstretched. It’s a lovely level of over-animation that is seen in almost every action, from jumps and rolls, and from background characters to the delightfully banjaxed ship itself — which looks less ready for spaceflight and more on its way to a scrapyard.
There are some great puzzles to complete with your co-op partner.
It looks like the game will give each player new mechanics constantly.
Better together
Entering our spacecraft, we were introduced to some of our tools, including a scrap hook and liquid launcher. Unlike a lot of co-op adventure games, Orbitals let my teammate and me choose which role we’d like to play, which at this early stage equated to who was pulling open the latches on doors, and who was putting out the fires within. As this mission went on, these tools wound up being used more: the pressurized push from the water and the mechanical pull of the hook, but the thing that quickly becomes apparent is the verbiage of what you are engaging with moment to moment is plentiful. One second you are pulling down platforms for your companion to jump on, the next, the two of you are using a laser gun and jet of water to recalibrate the engine’s cooling system.
This is something that both It Takes Two and Split Fiction excelled at. Giving two people playing together a constant stream of new and varied mechanics to play off one another. However, the part where those games often faltered was that the characters and stories they followed could be classified somewhere between slightly rote and actively unlikable. The blue-haired Maki and blue-skinned Omura, on the other hand, are instantly charming, helped in large part by some period-appropriate overacted English VO that feels ripped straight from a dodgy import tape found at the local video store.
The period-appropriate overacted English VO really helps sell the setting.
Multiple mechanical mayhem
While a lot of the game’s mechanics are only seen briefly, they quickly started to toy with expectations and actually challenge my teammate’s and my communication skills. One fiendishly simple mini-game had the two of us rebooting the ship’s engine by hitting the interact buttons colored in correspondence to what was on the screen, only to start throwing in button flips and order changes while we were on a timer.
As the demo went on, Orbitals began to layer more of these mechanical interactions alongside platforming challenges, leading up to a section that needed a surprising amount of coordination and communication for the two of us to get through. Basically, one of us had to guide a little drone to the end of a hall full of small flaps that they could pull up with their hook, while a player in a parallel hall traveled on an automatically moving platform and shot the other player’s drone with their laser cannon to keep the little guy charged. After one of two failed attempts, this section had us calling out flag numbers and totally locked in, and succeeding did feel like a genuine achievement in teamwork.
While the demo was only a slice that lasted under an hour, I keep thinking about how much fun Orbitals was.
However, not all of these segments were as successfully compelling. The end of the demo had us flying the actual spaceship itself out of the colony compound. The flight control of your ship is a little strange, as you actually only have X- and Z-axis controls; traveling up and down on the Y-axis is done automatically. While this theoretically simplifies things for the person flying, it feels a bit unnatural and on rails in practice. In these moments, the other player will be controlling a turret that can interact with the environment so that they can deactivate switches and laser grids (y’know, space stuff). But between the floatiness of space traversal and comparatively one-dimensional puzzles, this segment fell a bit flat. I am sure that space-faring sections will similarly layer mechanics like the platforming ones, but from what I saw, I was confident in the starting foundation.
It remains to be seen if the spaceship sections improve later in the game.
While the demo was only a slice that lasted under an hour, I keep thinking about how much fun Orbitals was. From the breathtaking art to gameplay that actually gets me excited to sync up schedules and organize playing with a friend, it’s a game that passes the initial sniff test of a 45-minute preview with flying colors.
Go team!
The subject of whether the diversity of mechanics can persist throughout a full campaign, and whether there is enough substance to the story to adequately support the bucketloads of style the game has going for it, remains to be seen, but thankfully we don’t have long to wait, as it comes out on Switch on September 3, 2026.
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