With its gorgeous backgrounds and an eerie soundtrack, ABS.ORB looks pretty interesting at first glance — kind of like a Zen version of Pac-Man.
Unfortunately, as it turns out, the experience isn’t quite as absorbing as the title might suggest. If anything, I’d call ABS.ORB more of a tech demo or a beta than a fully polished game, and I’d recommend that you let some other developer absorb your $1.99.
The Goal
ABS.ORB is one of those games where the objective is to try and survive for as long as possible. Unlike most other games, however, there is no scoring system or clear level indicator in this game. Your health ticks slowly but steadily away in a meter at the top of the screen, and it’s your job to replenish it by guiding your Artificial Bio Sphere Orb into biological threats (little floating orbs on screen) and neutralize them. Once neutralized, the debris from the bio threats can then be absorbed to replenish a portion of your health bar. After you’ve absorbed all of the bio threats on a particular level, you can then use the blue portal (a floating blue square) to reach the next level.
Lack of a significant gameplay mechanic
Obviously a lot of work went into establishing an engaging atmosphere for this title (the eerie music and interesting level backdrops attest to this), but I found myself questioning – rather quickly – why I was playing this game at all. Other good games in this genre often hook you in with online or local scoreboards, or a set of tactics or tricks that you, as a player, want to perfect. ABS.ORB features none of these things, so it often feels more like being trapped underwater, in the dark, searching desperately for pockets of air. ABS.ORB is about as much fun as that last sentence sounds. It’s bad gameplay design that makes the whole experience seem unfair and the lack of any real goal keep ABS.ORB from being anything more than something pretty to look at and listen to.
The biological threats and portals float aimlessly on-screen, just waiting for you to catch up to them. Oftentimes they’ll actually float off screen, almost beckoning for you to follow — but you can’t. There’s a strange invisible border at the edge of the screen that inexplicably cuts your movement off, while allowing portals and bio threats to float effortlessly out of your reach. I see this as an absolutely pointless limitation, and one that serves only to frustrate the player.
There doesn’t seem to be any rhyme or reason to the way that objects float off screen either – they don’t wrap around the game world and end up on the other side of the level (the way games like Pac-man have trained us to think). Instead these portals and bio threats will simply re-appear somewhere else on the level at some completely arbitrary new flight path. In other words, the game feels unpredictable, and you, as a player, never feel like you’re really in control.
Your Orb (which isn’t actually an orb – but something shaped more like a manta ray) always feels far too slow to catch up to its objectives, and I find it hard to believe that the power to move an eight-way analog stick is the only control we’re given in the game. I’d trade half my bloody health bar for some sort of grappling hook, tractor beam, or turbo boost to give me some kind of edge in this game.
Lose-lose situation
Dying is a pretty integral part of games like this, but dying in ABS.ORB is just awful all around. Not only does it feel like there was nothing you could do about your death – but tapping on the screen to restart doesn’t even restart the level. It doesn’t even go back to the first level.
No, dying in ABS.ORB means you have to sit through the three second intro screen of the game – the one that comes even before the main menu. At that point you actually have to tap on “Play Game” all over again and start from the beginning. I’ve played a lot of games over the years, and this behaviour of kicking the player back out to the intro screen is reminiscent of beta versions or demos – not finished titles.
Conclusion
I really wanted to like ABS.ORB, but most every part of the experience just felt counter-intuitive or half-baked, and it actually irritated me that the interface and gameplay made no obvious considerations for the player’s experience. Getting kicked all the way back out to the intro screen isn’t fun, and flying blind around the levels and simply hoping you’ll spot a biological threat before you choke to death just doesn’t make for compelling gaming experience. If anything, it achieves the opposite effect.
The game made a great first impression when I saw the screenshots and trailer video, but that’s all that ABS.ORB feels like for now: an impression. It’s an outline featuring an engaging atmosphere, but without any solid content to draw a player in and keep them there. This is Super Mario on a flat level without any mushrooms of fire flowers, it’s a Pac-Man where the ghosts phase through the walls and appear willy nilly on another part of the level, and it always feels like you’re being played, rather than playing a game. The most positive thing I can say about the title is that it does create an interesting atmosphere and it looks fantastic in screenshots, but it feels much more like am interactive screensaver than a game that’s worth your two dollars.
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ABS.ORB is available for $1.99 on the App Store.
The game was provided by Jason Ford for review on Just Another iPhone Blog. For further information regarding our site’s review policies, please see the “About” page.
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