Soviet-inspired platformer Little Orpheus finally gets its PC release

Adventure platformer Little Orpheus was meant to launch on PC back in March but was delayed at the last minute. At the time, the announcement said the decision to delay was taken "in light of recent events", referencing without directly naming the Russian invasion of Ukraine.

Well, as of today, Little Orpheus, which is a scifi adventure about a Soviet cosmonaut in 1962, has been released.

Here's the launch trailer:

Little Orpheus is the work of The Chinese Room, although it's a substantial departure from their previous works Dear Esther and Everybody's Gone To The Rapture. It's a side-scroller, for one, and ponderous narratives have been replaced with a fantastical adventure through "lost civilizations, undersea kingdoms, prehistoric jungles and lands beyond imagination."

It was originally released via Apple Arcade back in 2020, and it go so close to a PC release earlier this year that Brendy reviewed it for us in February. He found it visually dazzling:

In other words, the ratio of cinematic:platformer leans far towards popcorn. It has taken the seeds of classic cine-plats like Prince of Persia and blossomed them into a gorgeous bouquet of jaunts, minus the frustrating and unreadable obstacles that turn completing an otherwise short adventure into a lengthy gauntlet of trial and error (hello, Another World). I feel it's perfectly justified in stripping out those harsh, opaque moments of such elder games. But it also doesn't compensate with any other challenge or task.

At the time of Little Orpheus's delay, publisher Secret Mode wrote that the game "does not directly reference recent world events" but that they did "recognise some of the game's themes and content may be upsetting to players at this time." While releasing it now seems perfectly reasonable, it is worth noting that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is ongoing.

You can buy Little Orpheus from Steam for £9/€11.69.