The best co-op game since It Takes Two — that’s Shapefarm’s achievement, more or less, according to where critics have landed on Orbitals. It just comes with a caveat roughly the size of the game’s spaceship sections.
Hazelight cracked the co-op genre wide open half a decade ago with It Takes Two, and then watched as hardly anyone took up the challenge. Orbitals is the first genuine attempt in some time, and the write-ups indicate Shapefarm largely stuck the landing, if not quite at the height Hazelight established.
At the time of writing, scores for the anime-inspired co-op title stand at 81 and 84 on the two big review aggregators. Those figures fall short of the 91 that Hazelight’s Split Fiction managed, but they’re strong enough to draw genuine notice for a debut. Orbitals also stands as the best reviewed new release of 2026 to date.
The art is doing a lot of the work
At the top end of the spectrum, critic Austin King handed Orbitals a 9/10 and devoted most of his review to the way it looks and sounds. “An amazing retro anime artstyle makes this game a real sight to behold,” King wrote.
That sentiment recurs across the board. Even reviewers left unconvinced by the design conceded that the presentation pulls its weight.
Kaitlyn Peterson, who scored it 4/5, took it a step further by highlighting how the co-op structure never lets either player idle. Both hands stay on the wheel.
“Orbitals delivered on this even beyond my initial expectations,” Peterson wrote. “Maki and Omura each have their own roles for the mission, but nearly every aspect of the game, from exploring the world to defeating bosses, requires both players to work together, as they should. Nobody is ever just sitting on the sidelines.”
Then there’s the space combat
The full package didn’t land for everybody. Charles Harte, awarding a 7/10, made the case that the concept behind Orbitals outpaces what it actually delivers, weighed down by thin puzzle design and awkward spaceship stretches.
“It’s an engaging way to solve puzzles, with one of us moving obstacles and flipping switches and the other maneuvering, but I was regularly frustrated by the space combat,” Harte wrote. “Dodging fast homing missiles was a consistently uncomfortable affair, and one late-game sequence was downright overwhelming.”
Alex Spencer arrived at much the same conclusion in a three-star review. The audiovisual side impresses, but the game also picks up several of Hazelight’s flaws along the way, a nonsensical story among them. The puzzles, per Spencer, don’t stick in the mind well enough to compensate.
“Lightning certainly never strikes in the way it did with Split Fiction’s hoverbike captcha sequence, or flatulent flying pigs, or the literal boundary pushing of its grand finale, or… You get the point,” Spencer wrote. “I played that game eighteen months ago and can still rattle off a dozen moments like this. A few days after rolling credits on Orbitals, I’m having to look back over my screenshots as a memory-jogger.”
Flawed, and still at the front of a very short line
Critic Oli Welsh didn’t hesitate to name Orbitals the best co-op game since It Takes Two. Given how rarely any studio has been willing to walk the path Hazelight opened, that claim may well hold up — flaws and all.