This game manages to feel like nothing else in its core gameplay loop, and most of my time comes from trying to beat developer times in the game's time trials (which are brutal. Good going, Johnny.)

I think there's room for some very minor tweaking, with the addition of some sort of "grace period" for bunt bouncing while traveling up a slope to make you less likely to lose your momentum/chain of bunt bounces. Besides that? What's here is pretty much perfect for what it is.

The game as a whole, in terms of its level design and pacing, skews pretty hard on the easier side, and is straightforward to navigate. Good game to pick up and beat in an afternoon.

I bought my copy for $4.00, so I don't begrudge its length in the slightest. Just be mindful that, if you aren't trying to beat the dev times of the game's four very short time trials? You're looking at maybe an hour or two of gameplay.



What follows below is some bemused rambling/criticism of the game's greater meta-plot. I feel the need to emphasize that it does not subtract from the gameplay experience at all. In fact, you need to go out of your way to experience it.

There's more than enough charm in its levels and the cast of characters you'll encounter in a normal playthrough. No problems there.

That said? It did leave me baffled by its tone and inclusion in this silly/otherwise irreverent game about building a prosthetic arm, because you have no arms, and without arms you can't open a door you (Orbo) and your coworker, Peeb, are stuck behind. (Don't question it.)

This game has a weird flirtation with existentialist themes like determinism, establishes metaphysics of the world, and Orbo as some sort of failed chosen one, in a meta-plot that feels like something mopped up from the cutting room floor of Evangelion.

This meta-plot is communicated primarly through exposition dumps, and out-of-place SCP-inspired secret levels/terminal entries. There are world-changing stakes, but they don't really go anywhere. You're even told as much by magic plinth mommy, Obol.

Apparently this is part of a unified world of Feverdream Johnny's, tying back into a preceding itch.io game called "Nowhere, MI". I only ever learned of this link after following a Steam guide to find the hidden dev room, and even there, Johnny explains that everything "may not make sense" without having played it.

Since you're only ever told about this connection to an itch.io game when you find the secret developer room, I think it's fair to criticize this as the game's only weakness.

There's more that could've been done through environmental storytelling, or just the odd bits and pieces of flavor text, that could've unified this and sparked intrigue. The only thematically relevant level, it feels like, is Monolith Station.

As it stands, it felt like a bad pairing of one great dish (Orbo's Odyssey), and a really bizarre garnish (esoteric metaphysics) that may've tasted better with side-dish in-between (environmental storytelling).

I wasn't invested at all in the world, just Orbo and Peeb. Those two have some banter, but were hardly established. Suddenly, without any onramp from "blow up a gnome for a silly duck", you're thrust into the scenario of "listen to rock mommy tell Orbo how his boss may or may not have saved the world as you know it before hitting you with a neuralyzer."

Maybe I'll check out Nowhere, MI after this but I was really just in this for a platformer.