With couch co-op games so rare, it’s been lovely to see more debut at this year’s Summer Game Fest. It’s an even greater treat when they’ve got a unique art style that immerses you in a fun world. Publisher Kepler Interactive’s upcoming game Orbitals, launching Sept. 3, soars ahead of its contemporaries with a delightfully retro ’80s anime look — and my short preview with the game had me eager for more.
Nestling in a beanbag chair in a corner of Nintendo’s preview area on the SGF 2026 grounds, I fired up the demo of Orbitals on the Nintendo Switch 2 alongside another games journalist and was dropped right into the action. Our spaceship was in rough shape, and we needed to team up to get it out of the docking bay and on to our adventure.
Kepler Interactive had shrewdly decorated its preview space to look like a kid’s bedroom, complete with a bunk bed and toys, to make it feel like we were in the middle of a teen sleepover. It reminded me of when I’d crash with friends and watch anime like Dragon Ball Z and Gundam Wing, which was the point — Orbitals is “one of the most authentic recreations” of Japanese anime from the late ’80s and ’90s brought to life as a co-op adventure game, Kepler Interactive PR director Jack Kennedy told me.
“It’s an anime you can play,” he said.
If you aren’t a millennial who grew up watching that particular era of anime, the game is designed to appeal to fans of co-op games such as Hazelight Studios’ Split Fiction or It Takes Two, Kennedy said. That proved true. As my co-player and I roamed the halls of the starship, we grabbed equipment backpacks and took on tasks that required coordination — I used a remote claw to hold a hatch open while my partner sprayed it with water, for instance.
And, like Hazelight’s co-op games, the tasks we handled escalated in complexity but never quite reached the point of frustration. It helped that we were next to each other for this couch (er, bean bag) co-op experience. One sequence had our characters in front of a computer terminal, each of us pressing our particular buttons in alternating turns, with my partner and me calling out “me, then you, then me, you, me, you!” What a thrill.
In any other visual style, this would’ve been fun, but the ’80s anime look feels so distinct and yet familiar to me, like a warm blanket made of memories. I realize I’m a total mark for Orbitals’ look, but it’s not just the animation that developer Shapefarm somehow made to model that hand-drawn look of DBZ or Sailor Moon. The characters and environment look like they come from that era’s vision of a spaceborne future, with chunky analog tech and baggy space suits.
Orbitals has split-screen gameplay for players to each perform tasks in tandem. In this shot, one player uses a laser to superheat steel while the other bends it. Teamwork!
Orbitals’ visual identity is an intentional homage. The game’s art director, Marcos Ramos, grew up in Argentina watching anime and brought it to life for the game, Kennedy said. The backgrounds have a hand-painted watercolor kind of look, while foreground elements that can be picked up are thickly outlined to make them stand out.
Most of the animations are set to either the standard 24 frames per second or down to 12, mimicking the anime practice of saving costs by drawing only half the frames — a charming effect seen in animated films like Into the Spider-Verse.
Choosing to animate effectively half the frames isn’t something a lot of other anime-styled games can do, Kennedy pointed out. Many of them are fighting or high-paced action games where split-second timing is key, and players rely on counting exact frames to make precise moves. Orbitals, a more relaxed adventure, can be more playful with its visuals.
“It’s just the right genre, this is the right team working on it — it just makes it that hyperauthentic feel,” Kennedy said.
At Summer Game Fest, press got to try out Orbitals in a space decorated like a teen sleepover.
My Orbitals preview lasted a scant 20 minutes of my partner and me rambling around solving puzzles to get our ship moving, so I didn’t get any sense of what the game’s broader story would be. Kennedy couldn’t speak to it, but described its overall vibe as a light-hearted family-friendly adventure, “kind of like a Saturday morning cartoon.”
Remember when shows would have an episode that would be super important with high stakes and then the next they’d be off to the beach to hang out? That’s Orbitals’ story, Kennedy said — a mix of serious and silly.
“Ultimately, the real experience is the people playing it on the couch together and laughing and pointing at things you can do,” Kennedy said. “That’s an extension of what the game’s story is trying to achieve.”
Stephan is the sports journalist for the Maple Grove Report.
