Completed with 100% achievements in 70 hours of game time (more on that below)


Worbital took the age-old Worms model, scaled it up to a planetary level, and made it real-time. It's honestly as fun and as visually dazzling as the promo videos on the store page make it out to be. While each session starts off in a slow buildup phase, gameplay gradually gets more hectic as you are trying to defend, upgrade, repair and attack as quickly as possible, and sometimes all simultaneously. It's action-packed chaos, and well done at that.

Despite being a smaller, cheaper game, nothing feels cheap about it. It's not rough around the edges, cobbled together, nor hacky, like other titles at this price range may feel like. The devs took the time to design a quality experience, clean up any bugs, and add polish to all the fine details. The visuals, weapons, controls, balance, multiplayer are all thoughtfully crafted. For its $13 price it delivers everything I expected from it.



The interface deserves its own section, because it is such a slick design, for being a relatively smaller game. Nothing feels clunky. The transitions are smooth. Load times are lightning quick. Whether you are in the main menu, or in a match, everything you are looking for is thoughtfully laid out, and right where you expect to find it.

This ties in closely with the controls. They had to be somewhat creative to map out controls for this concept, as I haven't played any others like it. I think they nailed it, though. Whether you prefer keyboard + mouse, or gamepad, the controls are intuitive. There's not a lot of extra clicking or awkward motions. Once you get past the short learning curve, it all feels very fluid and natural.


The variety of weapons to choose from is quite satisfying, with none of them feeling too OP. You're not just blasting missiles at each other. There's artillery, homing missiles, spaceships, gravitational altering weapons, orbit derailers, steerable missiles, planet colonizers, and lasers, to mention a few. Each one of these weapons behaves differently, with their own strengths and weaknesses. For every weapon there are a couple defensive countermeasures that can mitigate them (should your opponent choose to include them in their loadout).

In the single-player campaign you get loadouts specific to each mission, but in multiplayer matches you get to build your own loadouts. They can either create a synergy, or cause you to be imbalanced and vulnerable. Sure, some weapons are better than others, but even the lamer weapons can be useful in particular niche situations. Worbital achieved one of the most difficult feats in their weapon design, and that is to ensure that there's not one or two loadouts that dominate all. I've played around a dozen online matches with my friends, and our loadouts continue to evolve. Each time we play, we are either refining our loadouts after a victory, or overhauling them after a crushing defeat. I've seen vastly different loadouts both win and lose, in various circumstances. Kudos to the devs on this one.

https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2991315197
https://steamproxy.net/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=2991318072


Multiplayer is really where Worbital shines. The dozen three and four-player matches with my friends have always been fun. The further you get into a battle, the more chaos ensues. I love that every match results in near, if not total destruction of the solar system. In the universe of Worbital, "technically winning" is all that matters, even if that means most of your planet surface is blown away in the process. I find that hilarious.

Even if you have no one to play with, you can play multiplayer against AI opponents, or fill empty slots with AI opponents in a match with friends. AI can be assigned an easy, medium or hard skill level, and there are meaningful differences between each.

There are dozens of settings to adjust that can give each multiplayer match its own flavor. A few notable settings are: planet speed, rotation speed, solar system size, asteroids, planet health, weapon costs, etc. The variety of settings can favor different loadouts. All the crucial multiplayer modes you would expect are there: local, online lobbies, and private online games. A standard multiplayer match might feel a tad long at 20 minutes, but luckily there are various settings (like weapon cost, planet health, and solar system size) that help speed things along.

There's a few downsides in multiplayer to be aware of:

• First and foremost, the lobby is rather barren. About 95% of the times that I've checked the lobby, it has had no games running. If you get it, I recommend buying it with some friends. The price is extremely reasonable, and won't set you back much even at full price. If all else fails, they do have a discord you can check, to scrape up some people to play with you.
  
• A second issue is that local and online multiplayer cannot mix. For example, you can't have two people sitting at a PC, playing two other opponents online. It's either all local, or all online.
  
• Due to chance, some starting positions are at a disadvantage. For example, two players may start in close proximity to each other, and have synchronous orbits, while a third player is on the other side of the solar system. He can wait it out while the other two beat up on each other. It doesn't happen every time, but it does occasionally. In the game's defense, certain loadouts can be built to mitigate this.
  
• Finally, and perhaps most insignificant, is that the end game statistics are inconsistent. My friends and I typically see all different numbers for things like: how many shots were fired, or how much money was spent. It's actually a credit to the devs that this was the only real bug I found.

Worbital mainly shines in multiplayer, but single-player is a close runner-up. The campaign missions were varied, and required different strategies. Each mission had dialogue among the characters interspersed throughout. The story wasn't too deep, but it was enough to entertain and felt like the right amount of immersion. There are three campaigns. Each one is the same story, but told from three perspectives.

Once you beat the campaign, you can play it again on extreme mode, and let me just say that extreme mode is crushingly hard. It's basically the same campaign, but with more skilled opponents. Each mission requires flawless execution. I played the 3rd Terrene mission probably a dozen times before completing it. The 4th Terrene mission I played even more, and could never crack it. From the forums, it does look like it is beatable, I just don't have what it takes, I guess! Luckily for me, no achievements are tied to completing extreme mode.


I put about 70 hours into getting all of the achievements. You could probably do it in a little less if that was your only focus. The rarest achievements (reaching max level with every faction) aren't hard, it just requires a lot of time to level up. Whether you win or lose, you get a little closer each time. I also spent extra time trying to get the "Accidents Happen" achievement because it was a bit picky. I created a guide on that to help all of you future players. I recommend reading it, because it is overly specific on how it must be accomplished.

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