izigame.me

Orbital Bullet very much feels like it should've never left Early Access (assuming it was Early Access in the first place.)
For one, there's just something overly clean, plain, and lacking about its aesthetics that I can't quite put my finger on. It could probably benefit from more grit, grime, and glitz in various places big and small all at the same time. Yet, it still does already strike a nice and interesting balance between Octopath-esque HD-2D pixel/voxel goodness, 3D physical-looking visual effects, and FURi-like cel-shaded neon niceties.
I have realized one other reason why the game feels so empty: overall lacking presence of enemy and attack sound effects.
It'd be great if pickups (rather than randumbly fading away suddenly with no consequence) blinked (and maybe even emitted a soft sound) for some amount of time shortly after dropping to warn of their impending disappearance--from what I could tell this does not currently happen.
The process of learning what exactly each pickup is/does could also be made more intuitive. For instance, I have no idea when or how I've acquired 'skill points'. Perhaps faded labels over each pickup? Or high-transparency rotoscoped tutorial pop-ups/arrows that appear less and less often or can be toggled off in Settings? AND/OR a unique sound cue for each type/subtype of pickup? Reminds me of Girlfriend Reviews' joke at the expense of Dead Cells: "Diarrhea Christmas Lights!"
While playing I'm constantly reminded of various lectures by both Vlambeer devs and Masahiro Sakurai (via his new YouTube channel) which Orbital Bullet might benefit from.
"Stop for big moments!" comes to mind, probably because I wish player and enemies alike suffered some frames of hitstun to make combat/contact feel more impactful and noticeable. For another example, the underestimated impacts on gamefeel things like screen shake and sprite shake can have. I can understand an argument against excessive screenshake in the case of this game due to the nature of its camera tracking and angle(s), but still I think its implementation should be considered further.
Speaking of shake, force feedback / rumble / haptics is SORELY missing. It would make this game at least twice as fun to play, if integrated properly and fully.
Left trigger to swap weapons is a strange mapping but I could probably get used to it. I continue accidentally hitting Left Bumper instead.
If the game is paused in the transition between cylinders (such as gliding across the rope), the travel sound effect loops while the game is paused. All sound effects ought to cease/freeze/fadeout instead.
I believe pausing the game also initiated a pass-filter on the music, but when I unpaused, the pass-filter persisted until I shifted circles in the level? Or maybe pass-filtering normally only occurs when shifting circles? Either way, I don't think pass-filtering is the optimal solution to sound communicating the circle shift. There should instead be additive/procedural stems/layers in the music to indicate/accompany the circle shift. That way, pass-filtering can still be used for pause without confusion/redundancy.
I would've made this review into one or more suggestions via the in-game suggestions menu (yet another feature indicating this game's Early Access status, iReckon), but for whatever weird reason, suggestions can't be made from the pause menu and can only be initiated during live gameplay!(???)
Most of all, I'm disappointed that it doesn't quite fill the RESOGUN shaped hole in my heart, or in my Steam library--perhaps after Returnal's PC port is out, that (RESOGUN) and other Housemarque Sony exclusives can come next.
Still deciding how I feel about it. If it works well on Steam Deck, I may just have to keep it, in hopes of future updates and improvements.
Will update this review with more ideas and specifics if and when I continue playing.
UPDATE 1: The game has been updated to include Steam Achievements, but Steam Achievements is not a listed/promoted feature on the game's store page. Fix this!
UPDATE 2: The game's forums suggest that fixes are few and far between. And they also suggest that the game runs fine on Steam Deck despite its reported unsupported status. Still, having said all this, I think I'd rather have 9 dollars instead of this game. It's sure to go on sale again in the future, maybe even after more updates.