Last year’s Game Awards presentation had a few games that one could argue blended in with the mental furniture, but one title certainly stuck out on style and panache alone: Orbitals, a two-player co-op game similar in gameplay to titles like It Takes Two and Split Fiction dressed up in a sci-fi retro anime skin. Well, if you weren’t familiar with it before, you certainly could be now, as developer Shapefarm and publisher Kepler Interactive are rolling out the hype as it heads for its Nintendo Switch 2 release on Thursday, September 3rd.
First off, the game’s offering up a website-based two-player instruction manual game that hearkens back to the good ol’ days of physical console game manuals while also offering fans a peek at the game’s world and characters while solving puzzles together. Just like the game itself, this requires two players working at the same time.
The game is also hyping its release with a music video for its opening theme full of anime cinematics and actual gameplay, and it will also have a presence at this year’s Gamescom event and is marking its launch in Kyoto, Japan, with a pop-up merch shop that will sell exclusive items from September 1st to the 9th.
As for the game itself, there’s some news there too: A second player can hop into the game alongside a friend for free when they download a global friend’s pass app for the Switch 2, meaning only one person has to actually own the game, whether they’re playing locally or online via game share or online. This app will also provide a demo of the first chapter of the game, but that will be for couch co-op only. The link above has all of the relevant instructions, otherwise bathe in the early ’90s anime vibes exuding from the video below.
