Oirbo Preview

In Oirbo, a post-apocalyptic game, you play as an adorable orange little robot who finds itself on a huge spaceship. You are not alone, however: several hostile robots are constantly coming to destroy you. This is a 2D action-platformer adventure that has you exploring a massive aircraft that is divided into many interconnected areas. To solve the mystery of what happened on planet Earth and how you got there, bits and pieces of the story are scattered around the ship that tell you the full tale and help you figure out why all the other robots on the spaceship hate this cute character while you power up your skills to fight off your foes and navigate the obstacles in the ship.

At the beginning of the game, there is a huge robot fixing Oirbo up; this spot is also one of the locations where you can save your progress. It also recovers health when visited. Make good use of this, as Oirbo has five circles of energy that are broken into three segments each. If you don’t find yourself near one of these points, it’s pretty easy to recover some health by defeating enemies. When enemy bots are defeated by jumping on them, there is a decent chance that they will drop an orb that will replenish one segment of HP. It may take a bit of grinding, but I recommend trying to keep this replenished, as there are sections of the ship where you will lose a full circle of HP just by touching wires. That’s 20% of your health gone with one touch, so it won’t take long before our hero is destroyed, and you have to start over at the last save point you had reached. It also plays great on the Steam Deck, and the save file moves between the computer and handheld easily to continue your game which I love.

The enemy bots that you encounter do have more of a purpose in addition to just being annoying. You can use them as platforms to get over dangerous areas with live wires. Oirbo can also bounce off of them to get a boost allowing you to reach platforms that are slightly out of reach. Every robot has a set pattern that they follow, so it’s pretty easy to time your jump right so that you don’t take extra damage. If they happen to be moving in an upwards direction, you will get a bit of a boost that is incredibly useful when you are trying to get to new areas. 

Oirbo, despite being a little robot, has an amazingly high jump that helps them reach blocks to get to other locations on the ship. This jump also allows you to glide over larger gaps and pits. It takes a bit of playing to get used to the range of the jumps so that you learn the limits of the leap and figure out which areas can be successfully cleared. At the beginning, there are some jumps that just can’t be made, but as you progress, Oirbo can learn new skills and power up existing abilities so that you can access new areas and spots you couldn’t reach before. This is a Metroidvania-style game, so you shouldn’t be too surprised at having to backtrack. 

Oirbo has a futuristic hand-drawn vibe to it, so all the enemies and characters that are encountered look cool. Even though you are on a spacecraft, some of the areas look like they are located at a junkyard, we see machines stacking piles of garbage and spare robot parts surprisingly often. It reminded me of a claw machine, and at first, I thought the large claw would be able to pick me up and add me to the pile of trash. The soundtrack sounds mysterious yet solemn at the same time, though I’m pretty sure the robots on this space station don’t miss the humans at all. Everything you encounter on the craft is made of metal, so whenever Oirbo makes a jump and lands on a platform, you hear a satisfying sound like you are jumping on a metal grate. 

The controls in the game work very well, there is the option to control your bot with a gamepad or with the keyboard. The little robot can jump, view a map of the areas of the spacecraft that you have explored or found from the map machine, or pause to change your settings. Learning how to control Oirbo’s floaty jump may take a few tries, but it reminded me of the gliding jump that Peach does in the Mario games, so remembering that the bot doesn’t drop like a stone when he jumps will be useful. 

The early access game has a huge amount of areas to explore, along with five different bosses to face. These enemies aren’t too scary once you memorise their movements and can anticipate incoming attacks. When you are defeated in battle — as I’m sure you will be — the game shows you how many times you have been destroyed during your run and any power-ups Oirbo managed to collect. Then you get to head back to face off against the boss once again. Which may be an easy task, or if you have to navigate through areas full of lasers, it may be more challenging. I hate stupid lasers, they are the bane of my existence! 

Oirbo is a fun platformer to play, there are a few moments of frustration as there is no human language on the spacecraft, just signs with symbols to help warn you of what is coming up next. Though I’m still not sure what exactly a green spearmint leaf represents, the game is in Early Access so I’m curious to see what the game will be like when it releases out of it!