Playing a puzzle game like Orbyss means I need to dust off my old rule about puzzle games. Essentially, the rule is that the puzzles should be hard but not too hard. There’s a sweet spot. A puzzle that’s overly complex leads to frustration overtaking any sense of achievement. Too easy and it yields no emotions at all. You want something that’s initially hard, but falls into place when you latch on to the logic behind it all. You need an ‘Ah ha’ moment.
Orbyss repeatedly nails that sweet spot. I know because I audibly said ‘ah ha’ more than once. Thankfully, while no one was around to hear me. It achieves this in a few ways, but I think the feeling stems from the fact that the puzzles themselves are quite short and self-contained. A lot you can solve just by sitting there and stroking your chin, which I consider a big pro. So if you can get into it, Orbyss will give your ego a stroke, even if some bits of it might leave you a little cold.
Rolling, Rolling, Rolling
Orbyss features two main elements: an orb, and a big abyss that kills you if you roll into it. Essentially, you start with a handful of marbles and you need to position them correctly in order to get to the next area. Things start fairly straightforward with rolling a ball into a switch, then changing control to another ball so you can roll across a bridge. By the end, you’re freezing balls in mid air then timing their drop along with a UFO, which is flying along a pre-programmed path. It’s quite the ramp up.
Though to Orbyss‘ credit, I never felt like I was completely lost. It introduces its pieces gently, and usually gives you a fairly straightforward puzzle to start with before mixing things up. There are quite a lot of different mechanics too, some of which I really enjoyed. One standout was a section where you had to position your marbles to go through a set number of gates in the right order. It required turning my thinking upside down and I loved it. Sadly, it never came back.
Orbyss has a habit of introducing mechanics, setting five or six puzzles around them, and then never using them again. I was waiting for the last chapter to bring everything home to roost, but the only mechanic that was really carried on was the freezing mechanic. A shame, really. Still, I did enjoy Orbyss‘s little sidepieces inbetween puzzle chapters. These are generally little audio-based puzzles (with good accessibility options if you’re as tone deaf as me), that try and build up the plot that’s running in the background. More on that later.
Pondering The Orbs
Pulling back to a broader scale, I will say that Orbyss‘ movement feels great. I was worried that the premise would have us rolling out of control all over the place. Thankfully, the orbs are easy to control, even when you’re pulling another orb behind you. Directing a non-possessable orb to the right place can be a bit fiddly, but it gets the job done. Graphics are quite nice too, with relevant puzzle elements being immediately visible. I didn’t make the ‘stroking the chin’ joke idly. I solved a few puzzles by just taking in all the mechanics and putting them together in my head.
Still, the graphics do contribute to a feeling of coldness that hangs over Orbyss. If I had to describe its atmosphere in one word it would be: sterile. Everything is set in a flat, white world where a big red thing is causing havoc. We fix it by interacting with random purple circles and rolling from place to place. There’s very little personality in the world. There are little red splodges with eyes and that’s about it. It’s a very vague plot. There are no real characters, or anything to latch on to. So the between puzzle sections focusing on this ‘story’ end up feeling a bit redundant.
It’s pretty clear that Orbyss is gameplay first, world second. Fortunately, its gameplay is pretty good. Although, one issue with puzzle games is replayability. Where do you go once you’ve solved all the puzzles? Well Orbyss tackles it, strangely, through achievements. An odd thing to praise but bear with me. For most of the puzzles, there are achievements for tackling it with a low number of switches, or some other constraint, so there must be other solutions that I missed. Re-contextualising solved puzzles is a good a way as any to generate some replayability.
Orbyss – Smart, But Cold
There’s even an achievement for keeping the original orb right to the end. I wish I’d seen it before I immediately left the orb to rot after the first puzzle. Oh well. My final thoughts on Orbyss is that it made me feel quite clever. It made the good decision to keep the puzzles, for the most part, small. I would solve a few, then tab out to focus on something else for a few minutes while my brain reset. I know losing the players attention like that isn’t really a good thing, but the puzzles felt like snacks for the mind.
If you can look past the general cold atmosphere, then you’re left with a big handful of intelligently designed puzzles. I never felt like I was guessing, or exploiting mechanics. Orbyss laid out the rules, and I solved the puzzle by following them. It also hits the right length for this sort of thing, with the first run through clocking in around five to six hours. It doesn’t drag things on. Orbyss is content to hand you a big platter of smart puzzles. While its plot and general surroundings might be a bit threadbare, it’s truly excellent at making you feel like a clever clogs.
