“Dodge’em up” — a sub-genre I had never heard of before, but Lost Orbit certainly fits the bill. The premise is simple yet addictively cool, a trait for many good indie and mobile titles. You play as Harrison, a faceless, voiceless maintenance worker whose ship fails at the start of the game, leaving you stranded in space. You must get through over forty-levels across four different solar systems, each sporting a unique look and challenges, in order to get back home. At your disposal is little more than your twitch reflexes and strategy.
Each level of Lost Orbit (or at least the ones I have gotten to at this point — I am in the third system) is short (under five minutes), and even has checkpoints, but if you hit just one solid object, you’re insta-killed and must either restart at the last checkpoint or you can restart the level over at anytime by pressing the touchpad button. The good news is that load times are instantaneous, and, I’m glad PixelNAUTS resisted the temptation to take a Souls-esque approach and make your acquired Obtainium something you can lose from one death to the next. Obtainium are these pink crystals scattered about the levels; in the lower right of the HUD is a x/y counter that shows you how many crystals you have out of the total available. It’s also a rough way of estimating how far through a level you are.
Obtainium can be spent at anytime, even mid-level, from the pause menu to unlock upgrades. The upgrade system is not super deep, but does add a significant amount of depth and variance to the gameplay as is. I liked that there is an option to completely re-spec your selections at anytime as well, penalty free, should you decide that you need more of one type of upgrade than another as you progress. The upgrades are split into three tiers: Utilities, Defensive, and Mega Boost. Utility upgrades add the ability to do barrel rolls (press L1 or R1 to execute, and even cooler is that you can adjust a slider to vary the distance of your barrel roll), which I unlocked early on. Doing barrel rolls can be tricky, in that you can roll right into an asteroid or planet or other object and die, but on the same token they’re also super cool looking and can just as easily save you from a collision as cause you to get into one. Magnetism is the second Utility upgrade, and it can be upgraded a few times to increase its effective range. It’s a passive ability that draws Obtainium to you, at first from very close range, but as you upgrade it will eventually pay for itself.
On the Defensive tier you have Reverse Thrusters which let you slam on the brakes for a second or two while the Bomb lets you explode nearby asteroids by pressing Square (and it can be upgraded a few times over), but you cannot spam this ability. I should mention that while the Reverse Thrusters can halt your forward progress, it can only do so for a second or two as the lower part of the screen is constantly scrolling “off.” Finally, the Mega Boost is for simply that, for going extra fast as long as you have the Fuel (lower left corner of the HUD) to support it.
Controls in such a game are vital because, well, one hit kills you and it’s all about getting through a level as fast and as unscathed as possible. I thought the controls of Lost Orbit were well designed and responsive. After you have unlocked all of the upgrades, there are a few buttons to learn but they aren’t hard to pick up and if you’re going to be making some noise on the leaderboards you’ll have to get comfortable with boosting, barrel rolling, and using your bombs. Other in-game hazards and features are revealed to you at regular intervals, or you can look at all of the gameplay mechanics from the Tutorials screen in the pause menu. One of the coolest and earliest introduced features is called screen wrapping which means if you fly off either side of the screen, you will instantly come out on the other side. Fortunately, a blue cue line appears on the opposite side of the screen just as you’re crossing over so you know where you will appear at.
Other mechanics include planets and their orbits, which you can pass through and gain some extra speed, or if you slow down and go into the planet’s orbit, it’s a great way to pick up some easy Obtainium that might be around the circumference of the planet, and you can boost out of orbit, too. These orbital boosts were the cause of many of my early deaths but once you get the hang of them, they’re more helpful than not. Anyway, you also have Pulsars to bounce off of, Gas Planets that give you a super speed burst, Ramps to help you ‘jump’ over objects, Grubs to avoid (or burn) and a few other goodies that add appreciable depth and variety to the game, that, at it’s core, is really simply about getting from A to B and avoid hitting anything in the process.
Lost Orbit has a surprisingly cool, voiced-over narration of a story about Harrison as you go along and that for me makes the experience more robust and interesting. You can also expect to see some pretty visuals across the four different systems, and obviously the framerate never breaks a sweat. As for audio, the music is electronic ambient, probably exactly what you would expect from such a game, but hey it fits the atmosphere well and is worth turning up. Speaking of volume, I found myself turning down my DS4’s volume as it chimes with every piece of Obtainium you pick up, which got a little grating, fast.
I’m still working my way through Lost Orbit, it’s the type of game that is easy enough to pick up and play, but like similar indie titles I have played in the past, after the first two to three hours it can get to be a little too much of a chore to want to play for more than a level or two at a time. In that regard, it reminded of Gripshift, a wonderful old PS3 downloadable title — fun, addictive, quick load times, lots of levels, but after a point it became less about the fun and more about the chore of just advancing. In respect to the presentation design and quality, Lost Orbit reminds of Shatter, another excellent PS3-era downloadable.
And with that, let’s head to the summary…
