Orbt XL | a Review
originally published on 14/10/2022;
Hello everyone, I am the planet-esque G.E.M.Simov, a cosmic being so mighty it controls the orbit of a planet that suspiciously resembles the Earth. Today, I’ll tell you about Orbt XL.
Simple review details - I rank games on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
Gameplay
At first, I did not know what to make of this game. I thought to myself that it was very weird, but then it slowly started clicking. See, the tutorial in this one - and this is half a Gameplay issue, half a Presentation issue - only tells you (the Player) how to manage your (the Player Character’s) orbit. It does not tell you how to get points, which is done via doing things of a funky nature.
Let’s get to it, though. The Player Character (PC) is the Earth. It is being sucked into a black hole, which black hole is in the middle of the screen, and the Earth has to avoid letting that happen. It does so by expanding its orbit, which happens by pressing the A key on the controller, or the Left Mouse Button, or the Spacebar on the keyboard.
Letting go of the expand orbit button makes your orbit shrink, which leads into the Earth rapidly spinning in a downward spiral, which spiral ends inside the black hole. By holding the expand orbit button, you expand the orbit until the Earth is spinning, slowly, along the outermost ring around the black hole… But you don’t really get points then.
Here comes the funky stuff. To progress, you need to accumulate points. To accumulate points, well, you need to do silly things. Silly things such as - rotate around the black hole. The smaller you orbit, the faster that happens, and every rotation seems to give you a point. You, of course, want many points, so you’d ideally keep your orbit as tiny as possible, so as to rotate fastest.
In reality, though, it’s not a rotation that gives you points. It’s a bar at the bottom/top of the screen that fills up and, when it fills up, it gives you a point, after which it empties. The rate at which the bar fills up is higher the closer you are to the Black Hole.
But there’s more obstacles. Other planets are being pulled into the black hole - planets, moons, things - and they are headed straight for it. They’ve got no orbits whatsoever, and they will collide with you. If they do that, it’s game over. So the faster you move, the more likely you are to collide with an incoming planet, because the faster you are, the less control you have, and the less room for movement you have - seeing as the black hole is the only possible way down.
Well, so you need to balance your speed with what you can manage, which would be in accordance with however many planets are barreling towards the black hole. Fortunately, you can get points by passing dangerously close to the incoming planets, thus providing you an incentive to actually slow down… Other than not dying, of course.
But that is not all. There are also objects - they look like objects - that you can pick up. They do nice things for you, but they behave exactly like planets, so you need to, rather than avoid them, collide with them head on, which brings even more complexity into this otherwise already challenging, in the sense that it has a learning curve, game. Some of those objects destroy all planets, safe for the PC, on the screen. Others just flat out grant you points. They’re all helpful to get, though.
So is that all there is to the game? Well… The planets that are getting sucked up by the black hole are different. They have different sizes and move at different speeds, some seemingly explode and create their own, new black holes (which last for only a few seconds), then there are those which explode and reverse the direction in which you’re going, there are those which make the black hole BIGGER, and on and on and on.
There is a problem with WHEN the planets with effects trigger their effects. All of them tend to trigger their effects when they get eaten up by the black hole, but then, sometimes, they just randomly trigger them, making a big mess of things. This additional random element is very unpleasant and bothersome.
Lots of interesting stuff, to be frank, and a lot of it comes out of the unusual means of control. The fact that there’s momentum, the fact that there’s resistance, the smoothness of it all - it really, really makes the experience neat. Though, I must admit, much of my reasoning to keep going was out of curiosity to see what new types of planets would wind up showing up, so I’ll stop myself from sharing any more, due to the fact it could be what draws Players to keep playing.
But an issue might be fast approaching. The game gets progressively harder, due to the fact that more and more planets start barreling towards you, each with its own, funky effect, each limiting the area the Player has to maneuver, whilst the black hole grows larger, doing the same. It seems as though there is an upper limit to how long the game can go on for, due to the apparently exponential growth of the challenge…
In any case, though, the game works on Orbits. Just play around them, and it’s a decently fun experience. 2/3
Presentation
This game looks really neat. Not only do all the planets move smoothly, but the way they are drawn is really pleasing to the eye. On top of that, the way everything is very well color-coded to provide the Player with as much information as they need, is very good.
Unfortunately, there are some issues. When a planet approaches, this game tells the Player that it is approaching before allowing it to show up on the screen. That’s a means of dealing with the issue of: “Something in the center of the screen and goons coming at it from 360 angles, but the screen is wide, rather than square, so the upper and lower halves are cut off, meaning that goons come out of them far more suddenly and need far less time to do their thing!”, and not a bad one at that.
See, the way they handle this is through ‘light beams’, I will so call them, which are color-coded to every type of planet/obstacle. They are very well defined, they display the exact angle at which the planet will be moving towards the Black Hole, and, via the color, they tend to inform you how fast the planet will move, as the colors and sizes are bound to speed. These ‘light beams’ also tell you how big the planets will be, because they are as wide as the planets themselves.
So far it is VERY good. However, the issue arises when we involve the type of obstacle that makes the black hole bigger. That type of obstacle is black, so the ‘light beam’ is also black… Black on a dark, dark blue, almost black, background… Do we see the problem?
Another issue seems to be that sometimes the indicators show up far, far too late, and the planet starts barreling towards the black hole (through the PC) way sooner than it should have. That could be a particular issue with the faster moving planets, but, still, due to the fact the focus of the Player is constantly moving, there needs to be more time for them to see and react to the ‘light beams’.
On the sound front, there are some sound effects, but they are very secondary. Secondary to what? Well, the music is the exact same, always, and it is also very samey and quite muted, quite secondary to something. In this case, the main focus of the game is the Gameplay, which is quite good. Focus on the gameplay, let everything else just be ambience and background noise. Not too bad.
However, that doesn’t mean the presentation is perfect. The issues of the black on black and speedy ‘light beams’ are not minor. Not only that, but the music feels… It feels barely decent, as if it is missing something. 2/3
Story
There is no story. One could try to come up with reasons as to why things are as they are, and what things are, but that’s not the key to the Story section. 0/3
Legendary Point
Does this game get the legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time? I’ll say it does NOt get it, due to the issues I’ve pointed out. 0/1
Conclusion
4/10. It’s not a bad game. For what it is, a little time-killer, it is something reasonably entertaining. I’d recommend it as a present, or as part of a present, or for people who like less engaging games.
Alas, in the bag of mediocrity it goes. It’ll gather some dust, but seeing as it’s going nowhere - courtesy of the black hole - it won’t mind.