The only thing better than spending a day playing games away from the rest of the world, is a day playing games with your mates. I can’t pretend I get a huge amount of time for multiplayer games anymore, but 2026 has done a good job of forcing me to try and find it. With games like Big Walk and Heave Ho 2 it’s hard to ignore the quality of multiplayer options right now, and maybe it’s the universe telling us we need to actually connect with other humans in this hellscape. If we all make friends by playing video games then maybe the future will be as fun as playing Orbitals makes it look, although preferably with a little less death.
Orbitals follows the lives of Maki and Omura, two young adventurous spirits who conveniently can’t die. When they were younger they were fed into some sort of magical machine, which stores their brains or souls or something and lets them respawn after exploding. It’s a fun setup made even better by the fact that Maki and Omura are both delightful balls of energy, with a friendship that’s equal parts adorable and ridiculous.
On the hunt for important sci-fi doodads you’ll need to work together to overcome all obstacles, in a splitscreen romp that will feel immediately familiar to anyone who has played a Hazelight game. It has a bit more in common with It Takes Two than Split Fiction though, with slightly more platforming fun despite the sci-fi trappings.
As you’d probably expect from a split screen co-op game, there’s a big emphasis on teamwork and cooperation as you explore alien lands. Most areas require the pair of you to utilise different tools to overcome puzzles or hazards, so while one of you uses a grappling gun to pull open vents the other will cool the overheating engines inside with water. All the ways you interact with the world like this feel appropriate for the setting, and make you feel like the star of a planet hopping anime.
As you progress through Orbitals you’ll have more and more co-op challenges thrown your way, that test your timing in communication in a variety of fun ways. An early one we really enjoyed involved one player zapping up a robot so it didn’t power down, while the other held open panels so the shot was clear (all while jumping between platforms). There are so many fun and fresh ideas in each area that it’s hard to stop smiling, making for a perfect bit of friendship building.
When you’re not wandering around alien environments, you’ll be flying to them in your ship. You need to work together to do this too, with one person in control of the driving and the other on the turrets. Both of these are fairly simple (especially piloting because you can’t control verticality) but having a cooperative way to get around is a nice touch regardless.
Your ship isn’t just a vehicle either, it’s also a home. This small hub area is somewhere you’ll constantly come back to, and it features lots of adorable Easter Eggs as well as a bunch of fun mini games. Playing laser tag with each other is way more entertaining than I would’ve imagined, as is working together to input passwords as fast as possible. These small distractions can easily keep you busy between missions, and were honestly some of my favourite parts of the game.
Orbitals has a whole lot going for it, but by far the most impressive are the visuals. The retro anime aesthetic is simply breathtaking, and the charm of the characters and story bring it all together. It’s refreshing to play a co-op game in the Hazelight style with such endearing characters and an engaging story, because so often that’s the worst part of a co-op adventure like this.
There’s very little to complain about in Orbitals, but it’s not quite perfect. The game doesn’t last a particularly long time, and it did leave me wanting more. The coop elements do feel rather familiar if you’ve played similar games too, and sometimes are a little overly simplistic. None of these things stopped me and my partners of choice from having a blast with Orbitals though, because my god is it a hard game to hate.
Orbitals is a gorgeous co-op game that doesn’t slack in the fun department, with loads of ideas packed into its short runtime. Whether you’re looking to play with kids, partners or pals it’s got something for everyone, and will bring people together like little else.
