With the release of Orbitals right around the corner, we sat down with Game Director Jakob Lundgren and Creative Director Marcos Ramos from Shapefarm during Gamescom. We talked about designing a co-op game that works for experienced and casual players alike, creating an authentic 80s anime look, joining forces with Nintendo and even two Easter eggs that nobody has managed to find yet.

Having played through Orbitals together with my wife, one thing immediately stood out to me: despite our completely different levels of gaming experience, neither of us ever felt like the weaker player. I play games almost daily, while she plays considerably less, although she somehow managed to finish Hollow Knight. The way Orbitals handles its different tools and responsibilities made that difference almost disappear. Turns out, that was very much intentional.

“Co-op for everyone”

Gaming Boulevard: This is your first project as Game Director. Having worked on co-op games before, what did you want to approach differently with Orbitals?

Jakob Lundgren: There were actually a lot of things I wanted to do similarly, taking lessons from things that worked before. One thing I really wanted to emphasize even more, however, was communication and making sure the game was fun regardless of your skill level. I’ve played games my entire life, but there have been plenty of moments where I wanted to introduce somebody to gaming or play something together with a partner who doesn’t play that often. Finding the right game can be surprisingly difficult. That’s why we were very deliberate with our external playtests. Around a third involved two core gamers, another third paired a core gamer with a casual player and the final third consisted of two casual players. We wanted all three groups to have an equally good time.

Gaming Boulevard: That’s something I really appreciated. The tools aren’t permanently tied to either character, so we could switch responsibilities depending on what we preferred. Was making both players feel more equal always part of the plan?

Jakob: One hundred percent. I’ve seen players swap controllers in other co-op games when one person is better at a certain mechanic, and that always bothered me a little. We want you to pick a character at the start and actually build a connection with that character. Instead, you can decide which mechanics you want to handle. Even while piloting the ship, you can choose whether you want to be the pilot or co-pilot. It does mean creating twice the animations and a lot more character work for certain mechanics, but it’s worth it because it makes the experience much friendlier for different types of players.

“The two-controller test”

Gaming Boulevard: One of the hardest parts of co-op puzzle design must be preventing one player from simply waiting while the other solves everything. How did you tackle that?

Jakob: It’s really tricky because you naturally start creating situations where one player holds a door open or stands somewhere to enable the other player. We eventually had a simple test. I would tell the designers to put two controllers in front of themselves and try to play the level alone. Pick up one controller, perform an action, put it down and continue with the other character. If you can get through the level that way, it’s not co-op enough. It needs to be impossible to play alone. That’s how we know both players actually need to work together simultaneously. It’s a surprisingly simple rule, but also one that explains a lot about how Orbitals feels while playing. You aren’t simply sharing the same screen; you’re constantly relying on what the other player is doing.

“An anime you somehow missed”

Gaming Boulevard: How do you create something this heavily inspired by classic anime while still making it feel like its own thing?

Marcos Ramos: From day one, we never wanted to copy a specific anime. We referenced a lot of things, but we didn’t want to make something like Dragon Ball that you can suddenly play, or Nausicaä with a controller. The way we always described Orbitals internally was: what if this was an anime that actually came out in the 80s and you somehow missed it? That meant really understanding how things looked and felt during that period. We studied everything from character designs and animation styles to colours, fashion and even hairstyles. That resulted in these huge art bibles, and from there we had to translate everything into shaders, character rigs and the actual game.

Jakob: Everyone on the team is also a huge anime fan, but we all grew up with slightly different shows and favourites. We encouraged people to bring those things they personally loved into the game. That helped us create something influenced by many different places rather than simply mimicking one anime.

Gaming Boulevard: It really does feel like an anime I should recognise. It’s almost nostalgia for something I’ve never actually watched. What was it like when all those individual pieces finally came together?

Jakob: You become incredibly blind to your own game when you’re looking at it every single day. Once we had the shaders, music, sound effects and animations in place, I happened to leave on a trip for a week. When I came back, I walked into the office, saw the game running on a screen and just thought: “That looks fucking sick!” You sometimes need that little bit of distance to see it again.

Marcos: We’ve even had moments where people on the team looked at screenshots and thought they were concept art. Some of our presentation slides look like old paintings or illustrations, but they’re actually just screenshots from the game. I’ve basically been fooled by my own game.

“Always leave them wanting a little more”

Gaming Boulevard: How do you know when you’ve explored a mechanic enough and it’s time to introduce something new?

Jakob: A lot of that comes down to gut feeling, but there’s something I keep repeating to the team: we should always leave a mechanic behind when you still want a little bit more of it. Thinking, “I could have played that a little longer,” is much better than thinking, “Okay, I’m done with this, can the game please move on?” We never want players to become tired of something. It should either feel like just enough or leave you wanting a little more.

Marcos: That philosophy also applies to the game itself. Short and sweet, with a focus on quality rather than simply having a lot of okay content.

Gaming Boulevard: I think that’s especially important for co-op. I never had to convince my wife to continue playing; she was actually the one asking whether we could continue Orbitals.

Jakob: That’s awesome! Co-op also means finding time when two people are available, so the length was very important to us. For me, the ideal co-op game can be played across two longer sessions or maybe three average ones. When it becomes much longer, real life starts getting in the way. Suddenly a few weeks have passed and you’re wondering whether you should continue and if you even remember where you were.

“From an old house in Tokyo to Nintendo”

Gaming Boulevard: What is it like seeing Orbitals being pushed on this scale by Nintendo?

Marcos: It’s incredibly humbling. Shapefarm started as a couple of guys working from an old house in Tokyo. Now, four years later, we’re standing here watching this long queue of people playing the game and having fun. Back in Tokyo, there are also campaigns appearing in places where we normally hang out ourselves. It’s surreal and we couldn’t be prouder. I don’t want to speak for Nintendo, but they believed in the vision from very early on. They understood that this was something you could experience together with a child or a friend, which fits very naturally with what Nintendo does.

Jakob: It simply felt like a really good fit for a Nintendo console. We’re also huge Nintendo fans ourselves and grew up playing their systems, so telling the team we were making a game for Nintendo was obviously a pretty special moment. Being based in Tokyo also naturally influences the game itself.

Marcos: I see Orbitals as a homage to the anime we watched growing up, but there’s also a lot of everyday Japanese culture in there. Things like going out to buy a coffee in Tokyo, meeting people and seeing little interactions around you. Those experiences find their way into the game. It really comes from a place of love for the country we live in. That influence is also noticeable in the hub, where it’s incredibly easy to get distracted by small details, side activities and minigames instead of immediately continuing the main objective.

“Two secrets nobody has found”

To end our conversation, I wanted to know what both developers were most excited for players to finally experience once Orbitals was out in the wild.

For Ramos, the answer was the game’s final conflict.

Marcos: I’m really excited to see what people think of it, both from a spectacle and story perspective. We threw everything we had into that moment. At its core, this is a story about people disagreeing with each other. There aren’t evil Space Lords trying to take over the universe. It’s people trying to help each other but approaching things in different ways. I’m really curious to see how people react to the outcome.

Lundgren, meanwhile, is waiting for something completely different. After watching around one hundred pairs work their way through Orbitals during playtests, there are apparently still some secrets left untouched.

Jakob: There are two Easter eggs that nobody has found yet. I’ve watched basically one hundred percent of our external playtests, so I’ve already seen a lot of people play through the game. I’m really excited for the moment someone finally discovers those for the first time.

Well, challenge accepted.