Little Orpheus Review (PC)

Ivan is carefully avoiding the blue light sight of his enemies, moving only at the right time to get past them. He then jumps and grabs ledges to get to a mechanism that drops a massive orb of energy, somewhere down below. Ivan gets himself on the same level as the orb, pushes it to a groove designed to receive it, while avoiding the blue-sighted enemies, and then activates another mechanism. Now it’s just a matter of completing a jumping puzzle to get to a cinematic that will lead to the end of this chapter of his story. I wonder where the story will take Ivan next and how he will justify the existence of the level to his interrogator.

Little Orpheus is developed by The Chinese Room, with publishing handled by Secret Mode. I played on the PC using Steam and the experience is also offered on the PlayStation 5, the Xbox Series X and S, the Nintendo Switch, and older consoles from Microsoft and Sony. The title delivers a narrative focus take on the side-scrolling adventure genre.

The player takes on the role of Ivan Ivanovich Privalov, a cosmonaut in the services of the USSR. He might have been trained to fly towards the stars, but he got a mission to try and find the center of the Earth, riding a drill powered by a nuclear device that shares a name with the game.

Three years later, Ivan sits in front of a powerful Communist general who’s ready to kill him and tries to explain everything that went weird during his mission and substantiate the claim that he actually saved the world. There’s some good narrative tension as the player decides whether Ivanovich is telling an embellished version of the truth or simply talking as long as possible to try and save his life.

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Little Orpheus is a very classic take on the side-scrolling adventure. Most of the time, players will move Ivan constantly to the right or left, occasionally forcing him to jump or slide to get past obstacles. There are some Quick Time Events to deal with. Ivan will need to move clearly signposted items around to reach certain areas or activate mechanisms. There are a few timed puzzle sections.

Sometimes, stealth is required to get past threatening creatures. But the game offers no real challenge and makes it easy for players to make progress. And, regardless of the theme of the level, the ledges are the same, the slide doesn’t change, there’s just another texture layered over the same actions.

As Ivan’s tales become more outlandish, the game becomes more meta. It tries to tie up the story in a pretty story-fueled bow, but the effort fell flat for me. It never justified the invested time or the effort to ignore the bland gameplay. Little Orpheus could have worked better with even more limited gameplay and a shorter runtime, vowing players with the rapid delivery of witty dialogue and new areas.

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Or the developers should have focused on finding ways to make exploring the levels feel interesting, adding new ways to move and maybe more interactions. But, as it stands, the game sits in the unhappy middle where there’s no fun in playing it and it takes too long to get to the interesting narrative bits.

Little Orpheus delivers moments of startling beauty. Ivan Ivanovich tells the general about some awesome sights and the team at The Chinese Room turns them into beautiful spaces, filled with detail, able to evoke the spirit of classic science fiction novels. The hollow Earth the game offers is more interesting than the one seen in major cinematic releases and filled with more emotion.

The soundtrack is well used to enhance the atmosphere, underline the feeling of discovery, and enhance the weirdness of the setting. The voice acting, for both Ivan and the powerful general, starts off well, with witty dialogue that questions what’s happening on screen. But the bombast and the sly avoidance become annoying relatively quickly and I wished the two voice actors found something more to infuse their characters with.

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The Good

The Bad

Conclusion