Shapefarm built the best co-op game since It Takes Two. That’s roughly where critics have settled on Orbitals, and it arrives with an asterisk about the size of the game’s spaceship sections.
Five years ago Hazelight blew the co-op genre open with It Takes Two, then watched almost nobody follow. Orbitals is the first serious attempt in a while, and the reviews suggest Shapefarm mostly pulled it off without quite reaching the bar Hazelight set.
As of this writing, the anime-inspired co-op game sits at an 81 and an 84 across the two major review aggregators. That trails Hazelight’s Split Fiction, which landed a 91, but it’s enough to put real attention on a debut. Orbitals is also the best reviewed new release of 2026 so far.
The art is doing a lot of the work
On the high end, critic Austin King gave Orbitals a 9/10 and spent most of it on how the thing looks and sounds. “An amazing retro anime artstyle makes this game a real sight to behold,” King wrote.
That praise shows up everywhere. Even the critics who came away cold on the design agreed the presentation earns its keep.
Kaitlyn Peterson scored it a 4/5 and went further, singling out how the co-op design refuses to let either player coast. Both hands stay on the wheel.
“Orbitals delivered on this even beyond my initial expectations,” Peterson wrote. “Maki and Omura each have their own roles for the mission, but nearly every aspect of the game, from exploring the world to defeating bosses, requires both players to work together, as they should. Nobody is ever just sitting on the sidelines.”
Then there’s the space combat
Not everyone bought the whole package. In a 7/10 review, Charles Harte argued the idea of Orbitals is stronger than the execution, dragged down by shallow puzzle design and clumsy spaceship segments.
“It’s an engaging way to solve puzzles, with one of us moving obstacles and flipping switches and the other maneuvering, but I was regularly frustrated by the space combat,” Harte wrote. “Dodging fast homing missiles was a consistently uncomfortable affair, and one late-game sequence was downright overwhelming.”
Alex Spencer, in a three-star review, landed in similar territory. The game looks and sounds great and then inherits some of Hazelight’s problems anyway, including a nonsensical story. The puzzles, Spencer said, aren’t memorable enough to cover for it.
“Lightning certainly never strikes in the way it did with Split Fiction’s hoverbike captcha sequence, or flatulent flying pigs, or the literal boundary pushing of its grand finale, or… You get the point,” Spencer wrote. “I played that game eighteen months ago and can still rattle off a dozen moments like this. A few days after rolling credits on Orbitals, I’m having to look back over my screenshots as a memory-jogger.”
Flawed, and still at the front of a very short line
Critic Oli Welsh went ahead and called Orbitals the best co-op game since It Takes Two. Considering how few developers have dared to follow Hazelight’s lead, that might just be true even if Orbitals is flawed.
