Hands-on impressions: Orbitals feels like stepping into a '80s anime adventure with a friend

"Like Split Fiction but within an anime"

Well, it could very well be the elevator pitch for Orbitals. But after sharing its first full hour with our colleague Javier Escribano in a couch co-op session arranged by publisher Kepler at Nintendo, we got to understand how the Switch 2 exclusive will differ from Hazelight's recent magnum opus besides the visuals when it releases on September 3.

That being said, those visuals strike first. And hard. In the accompanying gameplay you can watch both Studio Massket's hand-crafted game intro and the next few steps into the adventure, and you can see how the transition from cutscenes to gameplay feels so seamless. It's not just a matter of the drawing style, as the publisher confirmed that, while the game runs at locked 30 fps at all times, the anime sequences have been created at either 24 or even 12 fps to emphasise their retro feel. But check it out for yourself:

Missed it? Here's the gist. Our protagonists, Maki and Omura (her with a ponytail and him with horns and glasses), are just little kids when all goes wrong at their space station. The facility is burning, they're scared, but young lad Togen comes to the rescue, acts swiftly and puts them into some sort of escape pod. Granny-like Kinakoko disagrees: "they're too young to put in that thing". It's chaos everywhere as the adults discuss turning on the One Mind Machine. But wait, it wasn't your typical escape pod like in Star Wars: it looked more like a chamber, and it's now producing copies (?) of our little heroes. "Let's hope these I.M.s hold up", Togen says, referring to the clones, but it's too late, as a big explosion eats up the whole station and turns it into space debris in a matter of seconds.

Fast forward 15 years, it's time to play. Our now-late-teenage pair happily goes about their lives in the still-crumbling station, and they seem to be engineers in the making. The duo's dynamics and competitiveness reminds me of those between Ranma and Akane from the beloved manganime, if a bit milder. Surprisingly enough, Togen and Kina-chan (or their clones?) remain alive too. Maki and Omura are building their own spaceship to explore and mine the station's surroundings and to learn more about the "supernatural cosmic storm" that has them stranded, and from this point the screen splits in two for players to gain control.

Let me get back to the Split Fiction comparison for a moment. Orbitals' Settlement at the space station serves as fully-explorable hub world, with its own activities players can tackle alone or in co-op. This marks an important difference with the sci-fi/fantasy adventure and its back-to-back level approach, and it had me and Javi chilling out on a sofa, working out on a punching bag, and more. Already in our first few steps with the game we could notice the elaborated anime-style moves and transitions, either jumping and running around naturally, or in the more scripted sequences.

As the duo's spaceship isn't quite ready at first (more like faulty and burning too), the game introduces another way to move around freely once airborne: hovering and boosting with a jet-packed body suit. This is important to note as it'll be used later on, when players go in and out the co-op ship at their will during missions. The innards of the smaller burning ship also act as the tutorial to the on-foot mechanics, with repairs having our heroes using tools such as the Scrap Hook or the Liquid Launcher.

Several times during our session, we had to decide who takes each tool, and they can be swapped should the combination not work for you. We had Maki lifting lids while Omu put out the fires, and soon enough we realised that, same as with any other good co-op experience, fluent communication will be a must in Orbitals. By the way, with one copy of the game you'll be able to invite a second player freely on both local and online GameShare, and you can always use L to emote if voice chat isn't available.

As puzzles from that moment onwards get more complicated, platforming gains weight in the experience. You can "air dodge" to dash above hazards, and my first "death" when training this allowed me to notice that the animation respawning my character back into the action was similar to the one when they got cloned as I.M.s, hinting at some lore-based explanation for basically infinite lives.

To avoid much confusion or players getting stuck every now and then, the game puts some emphasis on graphical indicators and visual clues. Your next target is highlighted most of the time, and with the hook/water mechanisms there were clear "yellow handle" and "drop of water" signs to make things more obvious. Perhaps too obvious at first, but something tells me these hints will be very welcome later in the game.

Beam Cannon was the third tool introduced, and as you'd imagine, it's used to power up circuits with electricity. This increased the potential combinations as more and more mechanical puzzles were thrown at us at a nice pace. Recalibrate a boiler while keeping the temperature under control, rewire circuits while your partner moves the panels to open more paths, or perhaps complete button press sequences on a terminal once you've dropped your tools. Orbitals constantly keeps you thinking and occupied, yet it feels way less hectic, almost relaxing with the accompanying music, if we compare it to other co-op titles.

With the spaceship repaired and its engine rebooted, the duo is ready to finally go out on an exploration trip, and it also means that both piloting and gunner seat become available. Again, you can choose who does what (another difference versus fixed-powers characters), and with the split roles, the flight sections become similar to those in the Star Wars movies or the recent Star Fox in co-op, just much slower.

With all the mechanics and traversal options now fully introduced, it's time for Maki and Omura to investigate beyond the storm wall through its mysterious rift. Things are getting less stable and predictable in the surroundings, and with strengthened shields it might be possible for the Settlement to survive and keep progressing. "It's the first time. We've been dreaming about this for 15 years".

And what lies beyond the wall? I don't want to spoil much from this point, but suffice to say here is where things get more exciting and... magical. The outside also hides new threats in the form of creatures or defensive mechanical turrets and droids that for some reason remain operative. These are cannon fodder for the co-op flight sections, while the duo can exit their ship to, for example, make their way into an abandoned vessel.

Puzzles seemingly keep evolving beyond the "I hold you do your thing" premise, with timed sections, more moving objects requiring further sync-up, or physics-based solutions such as creating platforms on lava (this one felt very Zelda-like). Coordination gets demanding soon to keep things interesting, as our further upgraded ship reaches the asteroid field and our friends try to access a colossal purple cave complex.

Finally, exploring off the beaten path might reward you with collectibles as extras. One was the "Laser skip rope", an entertainment module we downloaded to then play on the ship. Mario Party-like, it was so addictive that a couple of journalists wasted the rest of the session trying to get the highest score there.

So far, even if nothing seemed extremely brilliant or mind-blowing, Orbitals kept our interest by evolving its ingenious puzzles and activities, but above all by truly conveying its retro anime setting, with beautiful animations for both people and mechanisms, extremely cute characters such as Hiroto the cat, and of course the drama and overreaction you would expect in this fashion. But as we've learned in the past, charm can only get you so far, and other than a few weird choices for controls and visual hints, it'll all depend on whether the co-op mechanics remain engaging over the long run. We'll know if Shapefarm has struck gold with this undeniably special proposal in less than two months.