Orbital Racer Reviews

I really hope this game will at some point be multiplayer. SOO much potential!

Great Mechanics in simulator mode. Very pretty graphics. The whole time I just wanted to play this in VR though. Please please devs, make this for the Index. It has all the mechanics I dont get from Elite Dangerous (it flies like ED: w/ Flight Assist off but with good prograde vector controls) or Star Citizen, it would be a masterpiece in VR. Great game!

I like it so much I wrote a little more information on my blog. If you want to check it out it's here: https://mrdavepizza.com/orbital-racer-review/ This is a fantastic often overlooked game. The physics, sound effects, environments (hovering above planets and astronomical settings) are all top notch. Very good graphics. The controls feel very nice and work quite well on controllers supporting rumble effects. I occasionally go through a very heavy space game interest and ran across this. From my original review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jETsYHNGI4w

Although this game is abandoned, it's still worth getting (particularly when on sale like it is at the time of this writing), even though I hadn't played it for over a year until today. But that's because it's so very hard! Realistic Newtonian spaceflight racing. You have to manage your fuel -- don't carry too much or you'll be overweight and slow, but carry enough to finish the race. Other settings also affect performance, like shielding against damage if you collide with other vehicles adding weight. Unlike the re-release on consoles such as Nintendo Switch (as "Void Space Racing"), this version has more maneuvering thrusters (translation up/down/left/right), more hardcore physics, a career mode with money management and sponsorships, and a silly "arcade mode" with power-ups and weapons, which I don't bother with. What it doesn't have that the console version does is multiplayer (albeit local only). There's joy enough to be had in just doing clean laps, as well as finally getting ahead of some AI competitors (won my first event today!), so I don't mind the lack of multiplayer too much. Unfortunately it is not optimized so the frame rates are not particularly good, and get worse the longer you play. Restarting will reset the frame rate though. In races I'm managing about 50 fps which is just good enough. Some options could be turned down a bit more if need be. Also unfortunately, there's no way to have head tracking enabled, which would help a great deal since you spend a lot of time not facing the direction you're traveling and firing your main thruster to complete a turn toward something you're not looking at. It would have been so easy for the developers to implement, as there is a "free look" button already implemented which lets you look around using joystick axes -- but only your configured flight control axes. You can't assign separate axes to the free-look camera, which would have made using vJoy on a head tracker dead simple. Without the head tracking, you have to rely on HUD elements and sound indicators that tell you if your trajectory is taking you into the next gate. (Most of the time you will be facing toward the following gate rather than the one you're yet to enter, as you'll always be in some arc or other.) If you're a fan of space sims, particularly those with hardcore physics like Pioneer Space Sim or Evochron Legacy (i.e. not like Elite Dangerous), you'll probably enjoy this.

12 hours in. I have just won my first career race. Buy this, put it on simulation. The flight mechanics are just insanely rewarding. I bought it for £1 but having spent time in it, the regular asking price of around £10 is worth it if you really enjoy a challenge. There is no multiplayer and never will be. Still buy it.

This game is great fun to play and with more content it would be truly Awesome! Also don't let the minimum system requirements put you off, I can run it on high settings 1080p with my Gtx 1050 2gb easily. EDIT> This game has been abandoned.

Very fun game with STUNNING visuals! (The video actually looks worse than the game itself). I really like the concept, and I'm getting good at racing. Game has great potential! What I would improve: - This game BEGS for VR Support. I want to race using Oculus VR! - Main menu interface could be re-designed, it feels over-complicated, rather it should guide player by hand. - Would be awesome if it had Multiplayer so I could race with friends. But overall very fun game I hope there will be some updates, and I will definitely play more!

Game is currently broken, you can't edit the default controls or calibrate a gamepad. Abandoned by the developer, it seems. Sad, because it's the only game like it.

I like physics based games and seeing videos of this reminded me of an old C64 game I had called Starace (you may look at it now and laugh but it was so futuristic back then). [b]This review is based on playing the simulation mode of the game, rather than arcade[/b]. Arcade mode looks entertaining enough - I just felt like a challenge. To describe the game in this mode, imagine Elite Dangerous with all the flight aids off and a track of checkpoints rather than a big void to shoot stuff in - that might alude to the challenge that will face you when playing this. You need good perception of inertia and expect to go through all the gates sideways (sometimes backwards) as you have to plan at least one corner ahead if not more. Naturally, the wishful thinking that I would excel in this mode quickly vanished as I failed to pace laps correctly and the AI in the game is crushingly difficult, even at Beginner. I don't see that as a negative but more as a target for me to improve to. Track design, graphics, sound and overall amount of content is great. The only downsides that I can see so far is graphics performance could be better (780OC not getting great fps even at Low-Normal at 1080p) and there are odd bugs in the tutorial (passing through gates at certain speeds) and the options menu. I'm sure these will get sorted out in time and they aren't a big issue at present. VR support would be great but the dev has been told that plenty of times so I won't bang on too much about that. Overall: most hardcore racer that you'll play in 2017 (or ever...)

wow. I can't believe how great this game is. I play only "float", (no "flight assist" or "inertial stabilization"), and I use a custom 4 joystick controller I made from arduino so that I can have all 6dof on sticks,, and actually searched high and low for a game just like this one,,, never found it,,, and only discovered it when someone recommended it in a forum. This game does take more coordination than the average bear who didn't play 6dof yet,,, but Nothing makes me happier than a game where the main engine provides the real thrust, and the maneuvering thrusters are proportionally smaller,, (forcing the pilot to point the crafts nose much sharper than the required turn, and throttle the main engine)... I can't believe my luck!! Seriously, I built that controller just for this kind of game, without even knowing it existed yet. I really hit the jackpot... It's super easy to make your own custom controller,, joysticks and arduinos are super affordable,, and super easy to use,, and the programming you need is already done by someone else, just copy and paste the code and you too can have a 6dof all on sticks controller!