Worbital

Space is truly the final frontier even in our modern age because, despite our increasing knowledge of our own solar system and galaxy, this new information only causes there to be an endless sea of questions about other phenomena that surface. It will be a challenge for future generations to figure out how to interact with our own civilizations throughout the cosmos as humanity expands toward the stars. Luckily, in a title as innovative as Worbital, you only have one goal: be the last civilization standing! No need to ponder the livelihood of other planets of your respective solar system, its everyone for themselves. This game from Team Jolly Roger is built on the idea of interplanetary battles carried out in real time, fast-paced action reminiscent of Starcraft where you’ll need to learn all about gravitational warfare if you want to survive.

The World of Worbital

Worbital is championed by the community and developers as primarily being a multiplayer mayhem game, but the single player campaign still has its moments of enjoyability. First and foremost, it teaches new players the basics of Worbital, which should be more than enough reason to get everyone to play it from the start. Worbital is not complex, but the idea of using ‘pseudo-scientific’ gravitational pull to determine how you should attack is certainly not innate knowledge we all have. Second, the campaign provides an interesting look at the world, or rather solar system/galaxy, of Worbital.

The entire story revolves around a resource crisis hitting the home planet of the three main characters/faction and they each have their own solution that they’re willing to die over to enact. Luna wishes to take a Malthusian route and kill off the other factions outright due to there being too many people and not enough resources (a dash of Thanos detectable here). Then, there’s Celestials which simply desire to colonize all stretches of the cosmos – expansion won’t have to stop in this case. Finally, Terrene does not want expansion of colonies to continue, but resource collection should go far beyond the whole planet. All of this is wrapped in healthy sheet of dark comedy, which is thoroughly enjoyable but unexpected.

Dominating the Solar System

At its core, Worbital allows you to take control of the military on the planet/s of your choice. You’ll have the ability to install eight different constructs ranging from cannons, factories, rocket launchers, and various other weaponry/production sites to earn you money and keep the competition at bay until you’re ready to strike. Like Shellshock, the combat aspects of Worbital require you to hone your gravity artillery skills or have your planet blown into an asteroid field. Early missions won’t be too big of a challenge in single player, but later AI have been known to be ‘all-seeing/knowing’ and can make the gameplay a bit of a pain as they perfect every attack on you. Though the multiplayer is a huge selling point on the store page, it has become difficult to find a game since the community is relatively small and it came out nearly two years ago. In its heyday, it was a great source of absolute mayhem and chaos, but from now on you’ll likely have to stick to the single player campaign.

Bottom Line

Worbital is an innovative game with a unique, low-poly art style that complements its fast-paced RTS mechanics well because it will run smoothly on most computers.

Pros

• Chaotic multiplayer
• Single player campaign interesting & informative for play

Cons

• Multiplayer unplayable without your own friends
• AI can be frustrating