This sci-fi anime co-op game is coming for It Take Two's crown

Orbitals shares 'a lot of the same design and co-op philosophies' as Hazelight's hits, says director Jakob Lundgren Orbitals immediately won our hearts when it was revealed at The Game Awards last year. A local co-op adventure with a retro anime aesthetic, amid a sea of Unreal Engine 5 trailers, including the infamous Highguard? Count us in. The response online was nothing but positive too, especially after the success of games such as It Takes Two and Split Fiction. "If you have someone in your life who doesn't play a lot of video games, but you want to share your passion with them, Orbitals will be the perfect game to do that." That's what Shapefarm game director Jakob Lundgren told me in a virtual, hands-off preview earlier this week. He explained that Orbitals is "never too difficult," because if you die, you respawn pretty much exactly where you were. "Quick to fail, quick to try again," he explained. That should sound familiar to anyone who has played the aforementioned two standout local co-op games of the last half-decade. Lundgren spent seven years working at Hazelight, where he contributed to both of those games, alongside the studio’s first co-op release, A Way Out. That