INTRODUCTION
Enter Orbiz, a spherical world, filled with a variety of zombies and mayhem. Play alone or with up to 3 of your closest pals. Your mission, if you choose to accept it, is to elude and/or kill a seemingly ceaseless tide of shambling corpses, destroy the radioactive mountains of garbage that continuously spawn them, and escape through a stargate-esque portal. Tread carefully though death means starting the process all over again.
If you enjoy the 80s', microplanets, and killing the undead with electric guitars, this is the game for you!
You can purchase Orbiz on Steam now for $9.99 but keep in mind, it is still in the early access stage which means it's still an incomplete product.
Design
Orbiz takes you on a trip back in time to a simpler era of gaming. Where the graphics were low resolution, the soundtrack was no more than ten notes, and the characters dialogue was voiced through indiscernible grunts. The 3D low-poly art brings a sense of whimsy to an otherwise over-saturated genre of zombie hack n' slash games. It's as if Zombies Ate My Neighbors met the indie sensation, Fez and the two had an illegitimate child on Dwarf Terrace-9 (the miniature planet from Rick and Morty season 2 episode 10: The Wedding Squanchers).
You can tell that a lot of love went into the game. Although most of that love was dusted off from the 1980s', it only adds to the overall charm. Emulated scanlines transform your high definition monitor into a retro television. Two-dimensional character portraits that become more beaten and bloodied as you lose health remind you of the good ol' days of 90s' side scrollers. This mimicked nostalgia helps to create the backdrop for a night of interdimensional zombie killing with friends.
This isn't to say the game is perfect though. There was the occasional undead that would get stuck behind a bus, statue, or building, unable to budge. In addition, there was an infrequent one that would float, high above the planet, desperately trying to eat your brains.
STORY
As this game exists only in the very early access phase it lacks any story structure but, one can use their imagination to discern what kind of history lurking beneath the surface. With acid-spitting zombies, a retro soundtrack, planets that are no bigger than the standard size of an NBA basketball, and inter-dimensional portals, there's bound to be a thrilling tale behind the worlds of Orbiz.
Hopefully, more of a background develops as the Indonesia-based Anoman Studio continues work on their very first launch title. They've previously stated that Orbiz is going to remain in early access over the next year or two as they polish it. This conceivably means that an interesting story will develop to explain why four friends are going around killing the undead masses.
GAMEPLAY
New foes also should also mean new weapon tactics right? That, unfortunately, was not the case, the weapon system left something to be desired. With no guide on how each armament worked you're forced to guess the effectiveness of a baseball bat versus a flying v guitar. The only apparent difference was the sound they made when bashing a zombie's head in. The guns suffered from similar issues. It took the same amount of shots from a revolver as it did from a shotgun to kill an enemy. Guns were hardly an effective tool at clearly the waves upon waves of walking corpses as you might imagine they would be.
Not only were the weapons ineffective and confusing you were also forced to pick up anything you walked over, without prompting. I found myself suddenly equipped with a crossbow when what I really wanted was that shotgun I dropped behind the tidal wave of zombies bearing down on me.
CONCLUSION
While Orbiz took me on an adventure back to my early days of gaming, it has a long way to go before it's ready to be officially launched. Amisdt the flaws in the game mechanics, I still had a blast bashing my way through swarms of the undead. This game has huge potential lying just below the surface, and I genuinely hope Anoman Studios spends the next year or two polishing Orbiz to its tremendous potential. For being such a new company, Anoman looks to have a bright future and I'm personally looking forward to seeing where they go next.
This is a game that can be consumed an hour at a time. Anything more than that and it starts feeling overtly repetitive and monotonous. Don't let that discourage you from purchasing Orbiz in its early access form though! This game has nowhere to go but up.