Orbitals: Maki and Omura Asymmetric Puzzle Roles
In Orbitals the tool you pick is the role, not the character. Scrap Hook, Beam Cannon, and Liquid Launcher define what each player does in a room. Here is how to assign, swap, and communicate through on-foot and ship sections.
Core problem: Players keep treating Maki and Omura like fixed classes. In Orbitals, the character you pick almost doesn't matter. The tool you pick is the role. Most frustration comes from grabbing the wrong gadget for that room, refusing to swap, and then standing around while the other person does the actual puzzle. Tools live on the ship, get highlighted per section, and can be swapped. Roles are fluid on purpose.
How Roles Actually Work
At the start of a station section (and after you return to the ship), the needed tools light up. Only one tool per person. You do not keep the same tool the whole game unless you both prefer it.
Grab, pull, rotate, yank platforms, levers, and hinges. Drag objects for the other player.
Heat, melt, charge robots and drones, power mechanisms. Precise point-this-thing tool.
Put out fire, cool heat, water plants and soil so they grow into platforms, push light objects.
1On-Foot Puzzle: The Order That Works
- 1Look at both screens before you move.
Split-screen means each of you sees a different angle or a different room half. Say out loud what you can interact with.
- 2Assign tools for this room only.
Example combo: hook pulls a platform into place, beam charges a guide-bot or melts a lock, water grows a plant platform or kills fire.
- 3Move at the same time.
Design intent is both people always doing something. No stand on the plate and wait. If one of you is idle for more than a few seconds, you probably have the wrong tool.
- 4Call timing out loud.
Simultaneous button presses, weight-shift carts, rhythm bits, and hold beam while they dodge mines all fail if you only watch your own half.
- 5If stuck for more than a minute, swap tools.
Look for the object that only the other tool can touch. Players report a lot of we had hook plus beam and the answer was water the dirt moments.
- 1Hook the yellow lever or bar so the other person can jump-dash the gap.
- 2Beam a robot that must stay powered or it blows. The other person rides or follows it.
- 3Water seeds after hook plants them to grow platforms.
- 4Both stand in a cart and lean opposite sides to turn. Hook slingshots the tight corners.
- 5One holds an anti-grav beam from the floor while the other rides it and dodges mines.
Talk vertical position constantly.
2Ship Sections: Pilot and Gunner
- 1One sits pilot. Path is mostly on rails. You steer within the lane, not free 6DOF.
- 2The other takes guns or systems. Clear rocks, hit switches, move obstacles the pilot cannot reach.
- 3Better spatial awareness or less motion-sick goes pilot. Better snap aim goes turret.
You can swap seats between flights. Don't lock Maki always flies.
- 4Talk ahead of the next cluster.
Call targets by clock position, not that one. Both screen halves often show almost the same view.
- 5Don't wander the cabins mid-flight unless the section clearly wants ammo crates or a station interaction.
Key Decisions
Common Mistakes
- Treating Maki as jumper and Omura as puzzle guy the whole campaign. Gameplay does not lock mobility to Maki or engineer stuff to Omura.
- Never going back to the ship rack after the first pickup. Tools are room-specific. Swapping is the intended loop.
- Solving only what your camera shows and not describing the other half. Both halves are one puzzle.
- Standing still on a switch and waiting. The game is built against start-stop co-op. Both players should always be doing something.
- Pilot staring at the same asteroid the gunner is already shooting. Look ahead and call the next cluster.
- Assuming a failed jump means git gud instead of the hook needs to rotate that platform 90 degrees first.