Orbitals dev explains why the team ditched single-player and went multiplayer only
Orbitals dev explains why the team ditched single-player and went multiplayer only
Posted on August 15, 2026 by Brian(@NE_Brian)
in News, Switch 2
Orbitals game director Jakob Lundgren has spoken about the decision to focus on multiplayer only and forgo single-player entirely.
Interestingly, there was one point very early on in development in which single-player was supported. However, that was ultimately scrapped.
Lundgren explained in an interview with MinnMax that Shapefarm needed to go all in with multiplayer. Having a single-player option wouldn’t allow the team to make a game which truly would have required cooperation between players.
“I’ve been at ShapeFarm for about four years at this point. Basically when I joined, the game was multiplayer, but you could play either single-player or two-player, and it was super early. So we just had like a barely playable prototype. But then becoming game director, I kind of said that like if we’re going to do multiplayer, I want it to be two-player only, because when it comes to creating co-op, if you allow it to be single-player as well, you can never really make it in such a way that players have to work together and they have to rely on each other because you’ve got to be able to complete it by yourself.
I kind of said like, if we’re making it either single-player or you can play it with two players, we’re doing both bits but not doing it fully. We’re not fully servicing either bits of this. So then I said, ‘Let’s just make it two-player only.’ Go fully in that direction and commit to it.”
We’ve seen multiplayer-only games in this space do well in the past. It Takes Two is one big example of this having sold millions and millions of copies, but when Orbitals started development, it had only just come out. Because of that, making that decision wasn’t as “safe as you would think it is today.”
Orbitals is coming to Nintendo Switch 2 on September 3, 2026. Take a look at the opening movie for the title here.
More: Kepler Interactive, Orbitals, Shapefarm
