Little Orpheus

Little Orpheus

released on Jun 12, 2020

Little Orpheus

released on Jun 12, 2020

An impossible adventure awaits in Little Orpheus, the brand-new adventure from award-winning studio The Chinese Room, a Sumo Digital Studio, available from today exclusively on Apple Arcade. From the BAFTA-winning team behind Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture and Dear Esther, Little Orpheus is a side-scrolling adventure game about one comrade’s journey to the centre of the Earth. The year is 1962. NASA are trying to put a man on the moon but in a remote corner of Siberia, a Soviet cosmonaut is heading in the other direction. Ivan Ivanovich is dropped into an extinct volcano in his exploration capsule, Little Orpheus, to explore the centre of the earth. Ivan vanishes, emerging three years later claiming to have saved the world. In a top-secret bunker, he is debriefed by the fearsome General Yurkovoi. Little Orpheus casts players as Ivan as he recounts an adventure beyond belief: a tale of lost civilizations, undersea kingdoms, and prehistoric jungles deep below the Earth’s crust. Brought to you in glorious technicolour with visuals inspired by a bygone era of adventure, Little Orpheus is a serialised adventure inspired by classic movies like Flash Gordon, Sinbad and The Land That Time Forgot.


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Unfortunately on iOS the platforming is completely unresponsive and haphazard. You spend much of your time falling or being eaten by a T-Rex simply because the touch controls failed to register.

Disappointing, as I found the narrative intriguing and the music memorable.

Years ago I might have persisted but life is too short to put up with games that don’t function correctly.

Got three levels deep and never encountered a new mechanic. They might come later, but all I got from the game was running to the right and extremely basic platforming.

It did the same joke at the end of each level, and the cutscene humour just fell very flat for me. I was surprised to see it was only made in 2020. Felt much older.

Tried on two separate occasions to get into this after reading a glowing review and enjoying similar cinematic platformers, and I’m giving up on it. Puzzles are obvious and sparse, and the story wasn’t interesting, which is necessary for a strong cinematic platformer. Often those games tell their stories wordlessly through mysterious environments and expressive animation, and this game dictates it to you through an annoying narrator.

Great graphics and story.

Controls were simple and for the most part included walking forward and jumping as well as turning wheels and pushing levers.

Enemies are stupidly easy to avoid since they follow a path and as long as you're out if the light or are far enough away, you won't get hurt.

9 chapters, but was ready for it to end by the seventh chapter or so.

Pretty short Playtime. I completed in about 3.5 hours.

As cinematic platformers go, Little Orpheus is definitely on the simpler and easier side, with puzzles and platforming that don't exactly demand much of the player; I've seen others label this a side-scrolling walking simulator, which is understandable even if I don't quite agree with that classification. That said, the presentation, visuals, art direction, and short playtime still make this worth checking out for fans of the genre.