There are some among us, even close to us, our friends and neighbors, that would look at something like Orbit Crash (80 MSP) and call it ugly, a glorified flash game that doesn’t deserve to breathe the same digital air as other, crowd-pleasing favorites. Those numbers are gratefully few. I say thank goodness we live in an intelligent, progressive society that doesn’t praise and reward the exceptionally good-looking while degrading and ostracizing the commoners. Ha. Of course I’m kidding. People are going to say that Orbit Crash is ugly.
It’s also not much of stretch to call it a glorified flash game. Movement feels weighty, no doubt to mimic the sensation of hurtling through space with abandon, but with simple controls (up or down) to compliment the simpler black & white art, there’s not much between it and what you’d fill your time with while waiting for something more impressive to download. Following in the well-traveled rut of ‘start from the celestial bottom and build yourself up’ simulators, except with a more arcade, auto-runner style, the game lives and dies by pushing that thrilling (so the developer hopes) concept endlessly.
Though whether the emphasis is on more speed, chill exploration, or avoiding obstacles, you’re still just growing in size and swallowing up the smaller bodies around you— Darwinism in Space, if you will. There’s no real score being kept here, no progress markers (save for your slow growth, which just looks like a zoomed in view), no objective beyond ‘space binging’, though developer Gentlemen Squid Studio insists there is an endgame. I didn’t find one.
Maybe I’m missing something, and Orbit Crash is less a game you ‘play’ and more like a space opera you watch. After the first growing spurt, I positioned my rock at the bottom of the screen, where it could continue to suck up the surrounding debris and avoid any Goliath-like entanglements, put down the controller, and then this literally happened for the next twenty minutes. Needless to say (my aloof, quizzical expressions speak volumes), whether you’re interacting with it or just watching, it’s not very fun.
A graphical and creative downgrade, Orbit Crash is a waste of your time and 80 MSP. However you choose to read that, there’s no venom or malice intended within the line, just hard fact. Chalk it up to an adventurous misstep, an abnormality from a developer that I respect, one that knows better and can do much better.