Little Orpheus

Little Orpheus is an episodic, side-scrolling platforming adventure game where you play as Ivan Ivanovich, a cosmonaut retelling his story to a general about how he lost his nuclear-powered exploration capsule after he was dropped to the center of the Earth. He tells stories about how he traversed mysterious lands from Russian legends, such as Plutonia and Sannikov Land as well as encounters with the Menkv. But how much of it is true? Atmosphere-wise, this game is silly and funny with Ivan's narrating and the general's questioning, with levels that are beautiful and distinct from one another. It reminds me of sci-fi movies of the late 20th century. It has 8 episodes and 1 bonus/epilogue. You can replay the levels, and by collecting orbs (not available on first runs) you can unlock costumes and concept arts. Each episode can be between 18-30 minutes long. While the story and premise are interesting, the gameplay sadly is lacking. Most of the time you will only be moving Ivan to the right with some platforming, while hearing him and the general talk. The bonus episode fortunately changes that, with some chase scenes and a vehicle piloting scene/boss fight, but sadly no other episod…

Calling this game a "puzzle platformer" would be too generous: it's more of a 2d walking simulator where it's near impossible to lose, and no puzzle takes more than a second of thought. Back when I played Limbo and Inside, their over-reliance on puzzles felt irritating, as it's hard to feel the horror of what's happening when you're too busy moving boxes around. Here, perhaps, a certain amount of challenge would benefit the game's feeling. Built around bickering between our plucky hero and the general questioning him, the story would incorporate so much more physical and meta-gags in the style of Call of Juarez: Gunslinger: "So that's how you died, tovarish? Smashed between cogs?" -- "No-no-no, I misspoke. That's how I WOULD have died if I didn't make the jump in time!" -- stuff that the actual game has very little of. Overall, the game is hilarious, but undercooked. More polish and more features could move it from good to great.

Well... I can definetly understand why this game has mixed reviews. So, let's start with the good points. The story is great. It's funny, engaging and unpredictable. The graphics are also very nice and the environments change completly with each episode (of which ther are eight plus the epilogue) which makes them always interesting. Now let's move on to the not so good points. The gameplay is pretty basic, which gets boring pretty quickly. However, the game is a walking simulator so it's something that's expected. The problem is the bugs. The big one tends to appear towards the end of the game, at episode 8. I really hated it. It wouldn't stop killing me no matter what I did or didn't do (just standing idle got me killed). Thankfully, just quitting the game than opening it up again and clicking on resume instead of the episode selection screen allowed me to restart from a checkpoint and bypass that bug. I conclusion, I would only recommend the game to people who know about the biggest bug and the workaound because they won't be able to finish the game without that knowledge.

First off, this is NOT a game for serious gamers. It's hilarious. i mean, I'm not even done playing it, but I hope the creators keep the story line alive (especially after all of our hero has been thru). There is nothing hard about this game, it's almost mindless fun, and I can't stress the fact about just how much fun it is. My wife thinks I'm crazy because I'll be sitting here with headphones on, and I'll bust out laughing. If you want a light-hearted game that doesn't take a lot of skill, or a lot of money, this is it. Little Orpheus may get found, but that shouldn't keep our hero from further adventures. As stated earlier, I hope the creators/writers can keep going with a few more quests. I, for one, am looking forward to it.

simple and fun journey

Well I enjoyed this game and the story, but the game is a little broken at times. I played through it and thought the environments and art style were pretty neat so def worth playing once. Even better to buy it on sale because tbh, it's not worth full price unless they fix some of the bugs and glitches. I couldn't get past a certain point in episode 8 without resetting because I had a falling death glitch that wouldn't go away. It's fun, but needs to be fixed.