Orbital Rush Review & Free Play

Orbital Rush: Hop the Planets and Chase a 1000x Final Boss Reward

Pull on your space suit and get ready to raid planets in Orbital Rush by Riddec Games. This crash game runs on one of the sharpest and most immersive mechanics I've played in the niche, and the little story wrapped around it is built every bit as well as it plays.

You roll a dice before each move, and the number it lands on (one to six) is how many planets your duck helper leaps forward across the map.

Each landing changes the course of the round. Hit a winning planet and its multiplier goes straight into your Cash Pot. Find a heart, and you gain an extra life that can save your run from the next threat. Land on a portal, and it launches you forward to the next portal in a single move. 

But if you crash into a death planet without a spare life, the journey ends on the spot, and your cash pot disappears.

Those winning planets come in three grades, each with its own ceiling. Lettuce planets pay 1x to 5x, cheese planets climb from 6x to 50x, and the rare diamond planets run anywhere up to a colossal 1,000x. I kept landing returns sitting between 2x and 20x my bet, though a couple of patient 55 to 60-step runs carried me up to around 35x. 

Two things that kept me stuck around any game longer than I did are that I saw almost no instant crashes, and it all has that board game vibe on top of the crash mechanics.

By step, I mean the progress bar arcing across the top, marking how far along the 100-tile map you've traveled toward the Final Boss. The problem, at least for me, is that once that bar creeps near a third full, cashing out feels like quitting early.

I honestly can't remember enjoying a crash game this much, and I think the reason is simple. Crash is crash, but when a studio drops you into the cosmos, layers on a little tasteful complexity, and the whole thing turns a fair profit, I'll take a round like this over most slots on the floor eight times in ten.