Hello there, Storm Wall survivors, couch co-op accomplices, and anime space drifters…
Game Cookies has finished Orbitals, and we loved it. The animation is gorgeous, playing together is a pleasure, the dubbing lands, and its strange world gives us plenty to think about. Then the credits arrive, and we are still reaching for another chapter.
It is too short for how much we want to live in it.
That is our biggest complaint about Shapefarm‘s adventure, published by Kepler Interactive. Maki and Omura earned our affection. Now we want more time with them, more of their history, and a deeper look at the civilization behind their unsettling inheritance. If somebody at Shapefarm or Kepler reads this: congratulations. Also, please come back. You have left two empty seats at our gaming table.
Orbitals launched on September 3 for Nintendo Switch 2. Our recommendation comes first; the section labeled Spoilers ahead later in this article discusses its identity questions and the world revealed by the story.
The Hazelight familiarity comes with an identity of its own
Anyone who enjoys Hazelight Studios‘s cooperative adventures will recognize the attraction: two players sharing a story, coordinating their actions, and depending on each other to move forward. Orbitals belongs comfortably in that conversation with A Way Out, It Takes Two, and Split Fiction. Shapefarm brings its own retro-anime personality to that structure.
For us, the co-op works because sharing the adventure feels good. We enjoyed playing together and spending time with these characters. That sounds simple, but it is the essential promise of this kind of game. The person beside you should feel like your partner in the journey.
Nintendo describes a game built around asymmetric cooperation, with local split-screen and online options. Different tools and shared obstacles turn communication into part of the play. Pick a friend, sibling, partner, or accomplice whose puzzle-solving decisions you are prepared to question lovingly.
🦊 Kiki: I want more studios making games that give me a reason to invite somebody over. Orbitals understands the appeal: put us in a strange place, give us something to solve together, and let the relationship do some of the work. Familiar foundations are perfectly welcome when the people building on them have taste. Shapefarm brought an entire anime space adventure to the party. I am happy to recognize the Hazelight family resemblance while enjoying what this team made. The industry can survive another game built around two people having a good evening. Somebody in a boardroom may need a lie-down when they discover we enjoyed ourselves without a daily engagement assignment.
🍪 Chip slides a second controller across the table and drops a calendar into the bin.
The animation deserves its own applause
Orbitals looks like a world somebody wanted to make. Its animation, character presentation, and atmosphere held our attention, and the dubbing helped us care about Maki and Omura. The performances gave us another reason to want these characters back.
The craft has a concrete production story behind it. Nintendo credits Studio Massket with the handcrafted cinematic cutscenes. Shapefarm’s associate art director Johannes Varmedal also describes extensive work on the game’s rendering, including custom shading and deliberately imperfect lines that reproduce qualities of older animation.
That account identifies Orbitals as Shapefarm’s first original project, built by a team with experience on earlier projects. Establishing an original world while making interactive scenes and cinematics belong to the same visual language is a substantial undertaking. The finished result deserves recognition for that ambition.
Understanding the work involved makes us more sympathetic to a compact adventure. It also makes the goodbye harder. We want to see these artists, animators, performers, and designers spend more time in a world they have made so appealing.
A short adventure can still leave too much appetite
We understand the comparison with the earlier games associated with Josef Fares. A Way Out and Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons both make the case for focused adventures. One historical detail needs to stay straight: Fares made Brothers at Starbreeze before forming Hazelight, whose first game was A Way Out.
⭐ Byte: Temple of Geek reports finishing Orbitals in around six hours. For comparison, The Ringer describes A Way Out as roughly five to six hours and about twice the length of Brothers. These are reported playthrough lengths, which vary with the players and their pace. They put Orbitals in A Way Out’s general range, with Brothers shorter. Our own complaint concerns the time we wanted with this world after reaching the ending.
We would not improve Orbitals by stretching every corridor or repeating its puzzles. Our appetite is for more meaningful time with its characters and ideas. The world intrigues us, and we wanted the story to spend longer exploring what it introduces.
Other reviewers have expressed related reservations. The AU Review wanted the identity themes to receive more attention through the middle of the adventure. We share that appetite, even while our overall response remains strongly positive.
🦊 Kiki: I can congratulate a kitchen and still be upset that dinner is over. Orbitals gave us characters worth following, lovely animation, and co-op we actually wanted to keep playing. Of course we asked for another serving. I respect a game that finishes before it becomes a second job, and I have no interest in supervising the same puzzle through its retirement years. But give the interesting ideas room to breathe. Let us know these people beyond the emergency currently trying to kill them. You made us care about Maki and Omura, then switched on the lights while we were still sitting there with our coats off.
🍪 Chip plants both oval arms on the empty serving plate and refuses to move.
Spoilers ahead for the One Mind and the world behind the adventure
The One Mind’s relationship with bodies, memory, and identity is precisely the kind of science fiction we want Orbitals to explore further. Its premise raises a disturbing possibility: preserving a person’s mind may leave complicated questions about who returns in a new body. The AU Review discusses the reconstruction of Maki and Omura and the identity questions it introduces.
After finishing, we still want a fuller account of their origins, their difference from those around them, and the civilization that reached such a disastrous end. Here is Game Cookies’ wish list for deeper storytelling. These are questions we want a future story to examine, rather than a claim that every point is an unexplained plot hole or that the community agrees on a theory.
Maki and Omura’s origins: What more can we learn about their families and lives before the catastrophe, beyond the rescue that puts their story in motion?
Their difference from the others: How much comes from their origins, how much from what happened to them, and how much from the choices they make afterward?
Kinakoko and Jaga’s connection: Did anyone else catch that hint that Kinakoko knew Jaga? Do these two have a history together? How did their paths cross, and what is Kinakoko keeping to herself?
The One Mind’s independence: How should we understand its apparent agency? Is there a self-conscious individual there, an accumulation of minds, or a system fulfilling a purpose its users no longer understand?
The separation of mind and body: What exactly survives the process? Are we watching the continuation of a person, the reconstruction of one, or something the civilization understood in terms of a soul?
Memory and continuity: What can be lost or altered between bodies? How would someone recognize a change in themselves if the memory needed to notice it were also missing?
The people who built the system: What were they originally trying to accomplish, and how did they decide that their solution was acceptable?
The civilization before the disaster: What was everyday life like, and which decisions turned its achievements into the inheritance Maki and Omura encounter?
Consent and control: Who could choose to enter the system, who understood the consequences, and who held authority over the people depending on it?
The adults’ history: How did Togen and the other survivors arrive at their beliefs? What did they know, fear, or misunderstand before the younger characters began asking questions?
Life beyond the crisis: What do Maki and Omura want for themselves when survival stops dictating the next move? What kind of home would they choose to build?
Some of those questions invite interpretation. Others could sustain an entire prequel. We would happily follow ordinary lives inside this extraordinary setting, long enough to understand what its people stood to lose.
🦊 Kiki: The One Mind is exactly the sort of idea that keeps me in the room after the credits. If a world can separate a mind from its body, I want to know who gets to decide what happens next. Someone built the thing. Someone trusted it. Someone had to live with the consequences. Put those people in a story and let their decisions hurt. You have already made the cosmic machinery interesting; now make me understand the person who thought turning it on was a good idea. I will gladly read the manga. Apparently my reward for finishing a cute co-op adventure is an urgent need to interrogate its civilization.
🍪 Chip unrolls a question scroll until it covers the floor and disappears beneath the door.
Kepler has our attention and a chance to keep it
Since Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, we have been paying closer attention to Kepler’s choices, and Orbitals strengthens our enthusiasm. Its catalog includes Expedition 33, Rematch, Bionic Bay, Pacific Drive, and Sifu. That is an interesting spread of creative identities to support. Our praise is for that range and for projects that make us curious about what the publisher will back next.
Kepler was supporting distinctive work before Expedition 33, too. Sifu and Pacific Drive already gave players reasons to notice its catalog. Orbitals adds a very different kind of adventure to that company, and gives us another reason to keep watching.
So here is the request to Shapefarm and Kepler: give us a way back into this world. An anime prequel could follow the civilization before its collapse. A story expansion could give Maki and Omura another adventure. A manga could explore the history, relationships, and uncomfortable questions that remain on our minds. Those are our wishes, not announced projects.
There is already something beyond the game to enjoy. The official site has announced a music video and a vinyl release for the opening and ending themes, while the Digital Deluxe edition includes a digital artbook and soundtrack. We appreciate those extensions. Our particular hunger is for additional narrative.
Fans move through games, shows, books, and everything else competing for an evening. Two years can pass while a sequel is being made, and the emotional immediacy of a finished adventure can fade. Thoughtful stories between releases could keep that affection active and help people carry their trust into a sequel, or even Shapefarm’s next unrelated project. Nobody can promise those projects will sell like hot bread. Earning a place in someone’s memory gives the next announcement a better welcome.
🦊 Kiki: Yes, we are content-consuming monsters. Look at us: the credits have barely finished and we are asking for an anime, a manga, and another space trip. The useful part for a publisher is that somebody actually wants to return. Treat that affection with care. Commission a story because there is something worth telling, give the creators time to make it good, and let us hear from these characters again. Please spare us the corporate reflex of translating every warm human feeling into a subscription. I asked to visit Maki and Omura. I did not volunteer for a quarterly relationship plan with a spaceship.
🍪 Chip pushes a subscription form aside and hugs a blank manga volume between his two oval arms.
In the end…
Congratulations to Shapefarm, Studio Massket, Kepler, and everybody whose work made Orbitals such a lovely place to spend time together. Game Cookies finished it happy, impressed, and hungry.
If you have a Nintendo Switch 2 and a friend or partner in crime who enjoys cooperative adventures, Orbitals is a must-play in our book. Bring someone you want to share the journey with. The official ways-to-play guide explains the local and online arrangements, including the Friend’s Pass option and their requirements.
Its brevity is our biggest reservation, because we wanted more of what it does well. We want more Maki and Omura. We want the history that made them possible and another chance to discover who they become. Shapefarm and Kepler, you have earned our attention. Please give us another good reason to stay in this orbit.
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⚙️ Stay curious about the people behind the cosmic machinery.
⚙️ Keep a second controller ready for your favorite accomplice.
⚙️ And remember: the credits can end the game while the questions keep you awake.
🦊 Kiki · 🍪 Chip · ⭐ Byte · 🦁 Leo
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