Orbiz Preview

Strap on your nostalgia goggles and buckle up for an adventure back to the 1980s' in the hack n' slash, top-down zombie shooter, Orbiz. Brave the never-ending hordes alone or play with 3 of your friends in local coop mode.

Orbiz Preview

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.


Orbiz Preview - choose your character

GAMEPLAY

What Orbiz lacks in narrative, it makes up for with endearing graphics and entertaining gameplay (at least for the first hour). Start by choosing from four characters: Ash (the spunky speedster), Max (the badass bruiser), Ray (the melee master), and Leo (the geeky gatherer). Every character has a unique talent that caters to very specific playstyles. When you blend their various abilities it creates a seamless 4-player co-op experience, the ideal environment for this game.
Traversing through the spherical worlds alone is a stressful experience.You have nobody to thin out the swarms of undead that you're desperately fleeing from. What strategy you use is heavily dependent on how many people you have playing the game. My solo strategy was to run around in circles, avoiding being overrun as best I could. 
That approach worked until I went toe to toe with the initial boss, Zombclops. The bosses are selected from a grab bag of horrifying creatures. I just happened to get one that shot a giant laser out of its solitary eye. Needless to say, a few hairs were singed while confronting the monstrosity. The main issue I had while attempting to defeat bosses on my own was my ability to do enough damage. I was constantly running out of ammo before putting a dent in their health bar. This meant I had to get in melee range. Needless to say, this…did not go well. The bosses physical attacks were not telegraphed, at all. What this resulted in was a feeble attempt to kite the enemy around the minuscule sphere before dying, horribly (and getting mocked for it).

Orbiz Preview - game over

After killing approximately 1,200 zombies, fighting a handful of horrifying bosses, and dying more than half a dozen times, the game began to lose some appeal. Starting from level one every time I died began to get frustrating and repetitive. I only continued playing for the sight-seeing aspect. With each new level, the scenery changed, and with it, so did the enemies. The gargantuan exploding zombified chefs turned into land sharks as burning suburban landscapes dissolved into tropical islands.

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.

Orbiz Preview - four player coop

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.

 

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