While last week’s Game Awards was absolutely stacked with huge announcements and new looks at big, exciting games, there were a lot of indie and AA game announcements worth noting too. One such case was the reveal of Orbitals, a co-op only puzzle adventure game from developer Shapefarm and publisher Kepler Interactive, which is set to launch next year as a Nintenod Switch 2 exclusive.
Orbitals was just one announcement from Kepler Interactive, publisher of the Game of the Year award-winning Clair Obscur: Expedition 33. The publisher came to the show with many exciting new titles including Frictional Games’s Ontos, and AlphaChannel Inc.’s TankRat, but Orbitals was the only of its titles to be a Nintendo Switch 2 exclusive.
The game features a charming retro-anime art style, with mechanics seemingly inspired by developer Hazelight’s work such as It Takes Two and Split Fiction, being that it is a co-op only game where players must work together to solve puzzles and complete challenges as a team. Orbitals is the debut title from Shapefarm, a Tokyo-based studio, and follows Maki and Omura, a pair of space explorers attempting to rescue their space station amidst a perilous meteor shower.
Kepler promises that the game will take full advantage of the Nintendo Switch 2’s hardware, utilizing the system’s GameShare feature to allow second players to play locally on the same hardware or wirelessly from another Nintendo Switch 2 or even a previous-generation Nintendo Switch console. Online players can take advantage of the Switch 2’s built-in microphone and GameChat features for co-op.
The game’s charming retro-anime look has been designed in partnership with Studio Massket, who will be creating hand-drawn cutscenes. Orbitals will also feature full voice acting in both Japanese and English, with the Japanese audio being used for the trailer.
Orbitals will launch in 2026 exclusively for Nintendo Switch 2.
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