Every moment in Orbitals feels electrifying. From the first blast of its excellent theme song to soaring through a technicolour galaxy while firing lasers, teaming up with a pal to fix space junk and save our colony, and occasionally stopping to check out a new freaky little alien.

This co-operative title moves at a breakneck pace, but not a single moment is wasted, packing thrills and chills into every second. Orbitals will leave you satisfied and stunned like a bumper anime movie at its very best.

From Tokyo-based developer Shapefarm, Orbitals is a two-player co-op title focused on asymmetrical gameplay. If that reminds you of indie darlings such as It Takes Two, Split Fiction, or A Way Out, there’s a very good reason. The game director, Jakob Lundgren (working alongside creative director Marcos Ramos), worked as a level designer on all of those titles and is clearly bringing over that expertise.

Notably, there’s one distinct difference between those titles and this one: the utterly gorgeous anime art style. Orbitals pays homage to a certain nostalgic anime aesthetic, and it delivers with aplomb. The round, friendly spaceships and heavy clunking machinery seem pulled straight out of the pragmatic, gritty retro-futurism of Cowboy Bebop, Gundam, or Akira Toriyama’s Dragon Ball and Sandland.

Your plucky protagonists, Maki and Omura, are on a mission to save their colony from a devastating storm that nearly killed them as children. Now adults, they’re working alongside pals like the grumpy Togen or affable elder Kinakoko to keep their colony safe once again.

Grab a friend and hop into local co-op or online via GameChat and GameShare, and then you’re quickly solving puzzles together with some pretty compelling tools, working to bring machinery back online, find McGuffins, or platforming around to explore one of the game’s many gorgeous biomes.

Now, Orbitals looks great, but does it also do enough to keep two people interested over a 5-7 hour campaign? Yes, it absolutely does. Sorry to ruin the ending, but yes, you are going to want to find a friend, carve out an evening or two, and throw yourself into the world of Orbitals and experience one of the best co-op games of the year.

Somewhat fortuitously, I was playing this year’s other co-op indie darling - Big Walk - at around the same time as Orbitals. But while House House’s adventure feels focused on exploring at your own pace and occasionally getting lost, Orbitals instead is a laser-focused thrill ride that packs a dense amount of clever ideas into its run time.

It occasionally feels close to Super Mario Galaxy levels of whirlwind fun, with both players equipping a tool like a laser and a hookshot to tackle an overlapping puzzle, only to be rewarded with an exhilarating 30 minutes of gameplay where you and your pal unravel several puzzles while bickering.

You both mostly stick to the weapon you choose before each mission, but the sheer number of ways you end up using them is impressive, with particular early standouts including playing musical kettles with a laser, or reflecting lasers on mirrors.

One area sees the player with the water gun clearing a path through lava for the other, while other 2D platforming sections have players taking it in turns to line up platforms for their counterpart. Then on the spaceship, one player navigates the way through obstacles, while another satisfyingly blasts lasers to clear a path.

Things generally work pretty harmoniously for both of you, though occasionally there are times when one player is simply waiting for the other to solve something. But these moments are few and far between.

Importantly, controlling your characters feels satisfying and intuitive, which will likely be good news for older gamers hoping to share this with their young ones. Platforming feels great, though some of the platforming puzzles do truly test the limited moveset. Controlling the ship together also feels wonderful, which works especially well in the title’s boss fights.

Here, however, it can occasionally feel like the difficulty is arbitrarily raised, with more focus on just blasting lasers than seemingly having to solve the boss’s gimmick. Still, this is a minor complaint, and we ended up so swept along by the visuals and story that we consistently muttered “wow” to each other while staring at the screen.

Space itself is presented as this bright and luscious world waiting to be navigated, and the painterly background style of each level helps the detailed characters pop out. The feeling of scale is a marvel, while moving between gameplay and cutscenes is seamless. It’s astounding seeing what the team at Studio Massket has achieved here, really nailing the feeling that you are controlling a classic anime. This is easily the best-looking game of the year for me, and I hope to see it sweep visual design awards come year’s end.

Backing up the visuals is a rock-solid performance throughout. Whether testing online or in local co-op, the framerate and visuals remain consistently impressive with no noticeable dips, which is especially important for some of the more intricate platforming challenges.

However, if playing online, try to ensure both players have adequate internet, as in my experience, my friend, who connected via GameChat, occasionally had to stare at a pixelated screen while my side remained steadfast throughout. Similarly, because of the split-screen visuals and the number of things on screen to interact with, it's ultimately designed to be played docked. While handheld is possible, it’s not the best way to enjoy Oribitals.

Perhaps one area that does feel underserved is the story, which, while compelling (and seemingly very inspired by Gundam Wing and Neon Genesis Evangelion), takes an abrupt turn towards the end that would feel more satisfying if we’d spent more time with the characters outside of gameplay.

So much effort has gone into Maki and Omura’s fantastic design and writing that it feels a shame we don’t get to spend more time with them and the other inhabitants of the colony. Though, thankfully, you can unlock minigames showcasing some of best gameplay mechanics on your adventure, and you and your friend can hang out on the spaceship playing these as long as you’d like.

Finally, one area in particular I want to commend is the audio design. Yes, the main theme is a banger, but Orbitals is stacked with fantastic music perfectly encapsulating the Toonami era. There’s a consistent parade of toe-tapping hits, or some eerier tracks to fit the more somber moments, but you may miss some of it while talking to your friends.

In particular, the sound effects are just wonderful, with every clunk of machinery, pew of a laser, or the new purr of a tiny alien feeling delightfully perfect for this world. These are just another of the many small details that work to sell the world of Orbitals, and it’s obvious how much effort went into every second of gameplay, to great effect.