When a game looks like a classic cartoon from Studio Ghibli or the folks who made Cowboy Bebop, but with a modern music video feel, it always gets my attention. Add in some tricky puzzles you can solve with a buddy, and I’m hooked. But tell me I can play it with my partner on two different Switch systems, and only have to buy the game once? That seals the deal. I’m ready to buy it the day it comes out.

I was already interested in Orbitals after seeing it at The Game Awards back in December 2025. We learned then that it’s made by Kepler Interactive and a Japanese company called Shapefarm. It’s a space puzzle game where you go on adventures, and it’s only coming to the Switch 2 sometime in 2026. We now know it’s planned for ‘summer’ that year.

You play as two friends, Maki and Omura, who are trying to save their space station home. It’s been hit by cosmic storms before, and they don’t want it to happen again. Each of you gets tools to change things in the game and solve puzzles. What’s really neat is that when you and your friend use your tools together, it can create new and surprising effects.

The way the game looks and plays is already enough to make me want it. It reminds me of a mix between old cartoons like Astro Boy and Evangelion. But then you find out that Studio Massket, an animation company that worked on shows like Edgerunners and One Piece, is doing the animated parts. This makes it even more special. Studio Massket is making all the cartoon scenes that connect the story, giving the game that real, lived-in feel that many 80s and 90s cartoons had, just like Cowboy Bebop.

So, the game itself looks fantastic. If you need more convincing, just watch the trailer. It seems like it’s trying to do what game maker Josef Fares and his team at Hazelight have been doing for a while now. They make games that are built just for two people to play together, telling stories that only work when friends solve puzzles as a team.

Josef Fares and his team have shown that a ‘Friend’s Pass’ is super important for these kinds of co-op games to do well. He said earlier this year that if you’re playing with someone next to you, you shouldn’t have to pay extra if you want to play with someone online. He thought it didn’t make sense. So, they came up with the Friends Pass, and it ended up being good for business too. It started as a creative idea and then became a smart business move.

The results speak for themselves: Split Fiction sold 2 million copies in just one week and broke three world records soon after it came out. Another game, It Takes Two, has sold over 20 million copies by now. Trusting people to play these games with a friend, and knowing that enough people will want to do that, instead of making them buy two copies to play on two different machines? It’s a nice change of pace. The game industry often feels like it’s not looking out for the average player, so this is a welcome decision.

So, back to Orbitals. I plan to play this game with one of my partners, sitting close on the sofa, me on my Switch 2 and them on their Switch Lite. Knowing that I can just buy the game once and invite them to play with me, even if they’re just a few feet away, makes me really like this game, and it’s not even out yet. Even better, I travel a lot for work, so knowing we can keep playing online without having to buy a second copy is another big plus. And if we want to, we can just play it together on the big TV screen.

I know this ‘GameShare’ idea isn’t brand new. Other games on the Switch 2, like Donkey Kong Bananza, Super Mario Odyssey, Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker, 51 Worldwide Games, and Hyrule Warriors: Age of Imprisonment, already use it. But it’s a really good idea. It’s something that should be talked about more, and it feels like it fits right in with Nintendo’s goal of making games for the whole family. And good for Orbitals for showing this kind of thinking, where the player comes first and playing together is key. At least, that’s how it looks on paper. I can’t wait to see how it works when I actually play it.