Little Orpheus Reviews

An adventure full of wonder and imagination.

It's important to note what Little Orpheus actually is. It is essentially an interactive, curated art exhibit. There are some jumping elements and some obstacles to deal with, but you're essentially holding the left stick to the right while running through several vistas for the majority of the runtime. You might get chased by something big or have to run away from crumbling platforms. That's over 8-9 chapters at around 30 minutes each. Barely enough to really constitute a “game” for some, which is why there's a mixed reaction in the reviews. That being said, what is here is pretty good. I like the banter between your character and the general interrogating him while everything's going on. The art design for all the levels are pretty nice, even if they were pretty samey mechanically. Music was nice. The story exists, I guess. It runs fairly well on the steam deck. Although, it made it sweat much more than I thought it would. At least, not with these graphics running at the deck’s lower resolution. Maybe it's an optimization issue or maybe it's just Unity in general. Still, it was serviceable. Full price is $13.00. If you go through it and replay levels for the collectibles, it likely will be worth full price. But with the repetitive gameplay and thankfully short runtime, it might not. I say it's still worth a try but on sale. 6-7/10. Above average to good.

The game itself is probably one of the EASIEST ones I have ever played. It can easily be played with just one hand and you can go through it without ever dying. That actually makes it less enjoyable as it poses no challenge at all. However, the best part of the game is the background narration where you (as Cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich Privalov) are being debriefed by General Yorkovol after being on a three-year mission to the center of the Earth. I really enjoying the conversation between the two and that alone was enough to keep me to the end of the game.

This game is a submarine of submarines. It was a complete surprise for such a well thought out game, to have received such little attention. A hidden gem for sure. I would have renamed the game Godzilla Orifice, instead of Little Orpheus.

100% Achievement Review: A quick review based on my experience completing all the (available) achievements. Title: Little Orpheus Summary: 2D story platformer game Personal notes: Little Orpheus is a platforming story based game which ultimately leads you down into the earth's core (Shoutout JTTCOTE). The game itself looks really good and has a very unique concept. I was very intrigued with finding out what happened to our boy Ivan Ivanovich and thought the story-telling through flashbacks and dialogue was well done and funny. The platforming itself is quite basic which is why I think it earned the walking sim tag for, I personally don't mind at all but I know some people are not fans of these kind of games. The art and music direction was really fitting for the game and had a lot of cool parts as seen in the game trailer. With this in mind, I think the concept for this game was very well done but the execution of it is lacking. I ran into way more bugs than I would've liked to (4070S, Ryzen 5800X3D), especially for a game without any complex systems. Freezes were pretty prominent happening at least once a level. The audio would cut out every now and then which was also quite frustrating. My biggest gripe with this game is level 8(*). Level 8 is just broken all over, you will phase through stuff, fall through stuff and you can easily get stuck in a "deathloop" which requires you not only restarting the scene but the whole level. As such it took me around five frustrating tries to complete it. Which leads me to the achievements. Half of them are related to the story which is cool.. the other half are related to completing the story, a second time in the exact same way. They aren't the worst achievements I have seen but I feel like it was a pretty lazy way to extend playtime without adding much. The costumes you unlock are pretty cool though so there's that! In conclusion, this game is a really good idea that is unfortunately drowned down by issues. I still thought the story was pretty good despite this as long as you understand it has quite a few issues and bugs. Good luck with level 8 if you try to manpower your way through it. Time it took to complete: 12hrs Most difficult achievement(s): - My Life is Complete (Find all of the Orbs in "The Lost Recordings) - Pig Dentistry and the Hand of Destiny * (Complete Episode 8) Difficulty rating: ★★★★☆☆☆☆☆☆ 4/10 Overall rating: ★★★★★☆☆☆☆☆ 5/10