With Orbitals, 80s anime, a legendary Gundam director and It Takes Two talent combine for a potential co-op smash hit

Orbitals, a co-op adventure game from developer Shapefarm and publisher Kepler Interactive, is positioning itself as “an anime you can play” for the Nintendo Switch 2. Announced at The Game Awards 2025 and showcased in February 2026’s Nintendo Direct, the game aims to authentically capture the retro anime aesthetic through an unprecedented collaboration with Studio Massket, the Japanese animation studio behind Attack on Titan, which creates all of Orbitals’ cutscenes.

The project brings together talent from acclaimed co-op titles, with Game Director Jakob Lundgren bringing experience from Hazelight’s It Takes Two and Split Fiction. Creative Director Marcos Ramos leads a team that has grown from six members at inception to a substantially larger operation. The game features hand-painted backgrounds and deliberately emulates the visual style and childlike wonder of 1980s anime—an aesthetic that games have historically struggled to authentically replicate.

Mechanically, Orbitals is a co-op-only platformer featuring two childhood best friends, Maki and Omura, on a space journey to save their people from isolation caused by a storm 15 years prior. Each character possesses unique tool abilities, creating It Takes Two-style cooperative puzzles that require player coordination. The design philosophy prioritizes accessibility—the game is “never too difficult,” with quick respawn mechanics that allow players to fail and retry immediately, making it welcoming to casual and non-traditional gamers. Early previews have generated significant enthusiasm, with critics particularly impressed by how the game captures both the anime visual aesthetic and the genre’s distinctive sense of wonder and energy.

With Orbitals, 80s anime, a legendary Gundam director and It Takes Two talent combine for a potential co-op smash hit

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