The moment Orbitals appeared at The Game Awards I knew, not only would this be something special, but something different. The boom in these split-screen and co-op games after the success of It Takes Two has been staggering, and many studios are trying to grasp the magic of what made that title a rare experience in video games. It hasn’t even been seven months since Shapefarm’s big reveal, but this small studio from Tokyo seems to have hit the ground running with their first game. During Summer Game Fest, I had a golden ticket opportunity. Nintendo invited Temple of Geek to preview several of their upcoming titles, including Orbitals. After twenty blissful minutes playing the demo, I’m counting down the days for September 3.

A Whimsical Wonder

I was able to play the demo via local co-op mode with another member of games media. We sat in a bunkbed themed room on bean bag chairs, the way the gaming with friends was meant to be played. As soon as someone pressed a button on the main menu screen, our twenty minutes began. We got to choose which of the two main protagonists on the character select screen. I chose Maki, a cheerful girl who looks like someone straight out of a Studio Ghibli movie. My partner played as Omura, a non-humanoid character I feel as though I’ve seen before watching Dragon Ball.

We got a bit of backstory on the two and found out they grew up together in a space station drifting through the galaxy. The aircraft starts malfunctioning, creating a life and death situation for everyone on board. Togen, an adult figure and possible parental guardian, realizes the ship is doomed and makes the selfless decision to put kid Maki and Omura into an escape pod to save them. 

Suddenly, we see they have these supernatural powers that start to change the course of fate. The two siblings are surprisingly teleported out of the escape pod and they stabilize two nearby generators. Unfortunately, this isn’t enough to stop the ship from going out in a fiery blaze. But we’re then taken fifteen into the future with Maki and Omura as teenagers racing through the halls mysteriously unscathed after what we just witnessed. 

How’s It Work?

The basics in Orbitals allow each player to choose between what equipment to control so you can use it together, all while playing in split screen. Our first task was to put out a fire and by holding ZL on my gun, out came a grappling hook that pulled open a hatch, exposing the fire. Meanwhile, my co-op partner used his water gun to put out said fires. There were several similar puzzles throughout the demo, some requiring more thinking power than others, but those made us feel like geniuses once we completed them. 

“Orbitals is a game that requires two players to be totally in sync”

We’ve seen plenty of co-op games where two players are needed to get through a level, but I don’t think we’ve seen one so in-depth when it came to teamwork. The mechanics don’t necessarily have your tools do the work for both players as you really have to operate like a well-oiled machine. Timing, precision, rhythm, and sometimes all three were a key element in every puzzle. It takes some trial and testing to figure out which player had an easier time with a certain gun, and if our timing was way off, we’d simply switch tools and try again.

Orbitals is a game that requires two players to be totally in sync, which we all know can’t always happen on the first try. But in the process of it all, it can lead to plenty of fun moments with a friend. And this is only the beginning of the game, so I can only imagine what other thought provoking brain teasers await me. 

Another teaser for us involved rewiring circuits using a Beam Canon and the same Scrap Hook from before. I used a laser to drag an electrical component across a circuit board as my partner used their hook to rotate a wall on said board to clear a path for me. This allowed me to send the component into its drop-off zone after shifting things around into our own personal maze.

“I can see this causing a lot of back and forth yelling amongst friends . . . all in the name of good fun”

I was doing fine until we got to the final part. This required me to laser across three metal pads in an effort to get to the other side, but on a fixed time. One by one, player two used their hook to flip up each piece, and eventually, they’d flip back down on their own. Unfortunately for us, my timing was off and I simply couldn’t control my cannon well enough to get us through. On the bright side, we finally swapped tools and made it out of this section in a pinch to get to the end.

Probably the most fun one for me was rebooting the engine using two simple inputs. We assigned ourselves different colored buttons to press, I was blue and player two was red. Red squares and blue diamonds appeared on the screen and we’d press our designated colors. We were thrown a twist as “Switch” and “Shuffle” icons were added, switching colors of both our buttons and shuffling the order of those colors on the screen at the same time.

This had me needing to call out loud what color was displayed next and us double checking who had the correct button. It felt like those weird filter challenges where you see the word “Red” written in blue and having to state what color you see instead of what’s written in front of you. I can see this causing a lot of back and forth yelling amongst friends, and throwing a lot of blame, all in the name of good fun. 

Tumultuous Timing

The two minute warning pops up in the corner and we are trying to move ever so swiftly. Why rush to the end of the demo? Well, there was a point where we had to exit the ship and fly through space to get to a different carrier. Which gave me the assumption we’d be flying our own rockets at some point. We were told by the game representatives the demo ends with both players piloting them. In the end, we spent too much time figuring out those previous levels to make it to the big finale and our speed didn’t even matter. 

It’s impressive to see how well the game’s art style works with moving 3D models. Each character’s personality comes out seeing them run and move, but the retro anime style still stays without looking too 3D. It feels like other “anime” games have tried to do the same thing, but you can tell something looks slightly off. Orbitals is effortlessly able to blend both a 2D aesthetic in an almost stop motion fashion when it comes to performance. You could also compare the way it performs to a flip book, where an object can visually appear to be moving at normal speed, but in reality it’s moving fast while keeping its own look and feel. 

“Orbitals is shaping up to be my most anticipated game of 2026”

The only location we were able to play through was inside a spaceship. When working through an obstacle, you can see how fluidly fire or a giant rod not only moves, but behaves like a giant piece of machinery. Again, these are all 3D models with a retro look to it. Everything feels incredibly dramatic like an anime, which is the entire point of the game about an intergalactic adventure game you play with a friend. 

The closer we get to its September 3 release date, the more Orbitals is shaping up to be my most anticipated game of 2026. Not only does it have unique level designs, clever puzzles mixed with innovative gameplay, and stunning visuals faithful to retro anime of the 90’s, but it plays like a solid co-op adventure overflowing with endless fun. The Switch 2 library has a powerhouse of titles that make the console worth buying, and if you don’t already have a Switch 2 yet, Orbitals is the reason to change that this year. Preferably before the price goes up in September.

Orbitals launches September 3 on Nintendo Switch 2.