Art Style: Orbient review

Drifting slowly through space, to a soundtrack of ambient bleeps and blorks. At first it seems like some strange kind of relaxation exercise for robots, but if you fail to appreciate the gravity of the situation you%26rsquo;ll be crash landing on the nearest planet. You control a little space rock, and the aim is to absorb similar celestial bodies until you grow big enough to have a decent sized moon of your own. Once you%26rsquo;ve got enough mass, carefully attracting the moon will end the level.

The clever part is in handling your asteroid. You can hold A to attract it towards objects or B to repel it, and with just those two buttons you can ease into orbit around a planet, drag in a smaller asteroid and slingshot off into space towards the next one.

There are bonus objectives including gathering all the available objects in a system (not all of them can be absorbed) and gently collecting smaller satellites to orbit your increasingly grand planetoid. Once you%26rsquo;ve collected everything bar the target moon you%26rsquo;ll have the chance to collect a fragile golden crescent which needs to be coaxed into your gravitational field without letting it collide with the surface. You%26rsquo;re also rated on the time taken to finish the level.

It%26rsquo;s the same as the GBA game Orbital. The graphics are a bit better and there are effects to inform you when you%26rsquo;re attracting, when you%26rsquo;re repelling and when you%26rsquo;re in orbit, which are the only things you need to know. Play it and it%26rsquo;ll all make sense. It%26rsquo;s hardly rocket science, is it? Oh, hang on%26hellip;

Arp 24, 2009