A downloadable game for Windows, macOS, and Linux

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In From Orbit you'll manage the crew of a small spaceship. Stranded deep in uncharted space, they need to make their way home. Journey from planet to planet, each procedurally generated with unique environments, challenges, and alien creatures. 

Explore 
Scout out the richest resources and the deadliest critters, and discover unique challenges and powerful artifacts. 

Extract 
You're going to need all the Ore and Crystal you can carry if you're going to mount a successful defense or purchase the upgrades you'll need to make it home alive. 

Excape 
Err... Escape. The resources on each planet won't last forever, but the alien creatures willing to bite your legs off never seem to end, eventually overwhelming even the most stalwart crew. Hold out as long as you can... but don't throw your resources - or the lives of your crew - away to a lost cause. Always be prepared to make a timely exit when things start getting hairy.

How To Play

If you're new to RTS games and need some pointers, check out...


Soundtrack

From Orbit's soundtrack was composed by tenfour, and is available for purchase separately. If you've enjoyed the music in the game, please check it out!

From Orbit (Original Game Soundtrack)


StatusReleased
PlatformsWindows, macOS, Linux
Release date Aug 27, 2019
Rating
Rated 4.1 out of 5 stars
(151 total ratings)
AuthorTentacle Head Games
GenreStrategy, Action
Made withBlender, Adobe Photoshop, Unity, Maya
Tags3D, Singleplayer, Space
Average sessionAbout a half-hour
LanguagesEnglish
InputsKeyboard, Mouse, Gamepad (any)
AccessibilityConfigurable controls
LinksSteam, Homepage, Twitter, Soundtrack

Download

Download NowName your own price

Click download now to get access to the following files:

from-orbit-windows.zip 80 MB
Version 10
from-orbit-osx-universal.zip 86 MB
Version 10
from-orbit-linux-x86.zip 87 MB
Version 10

Development log

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Comments

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Viewing most recent comments 2 to 41 of 65 · Next page · Last page

is there a discord ?

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It took a few tries for me to wrap my head around, but I have been having a blast playing it now that I almost know what's going on. I love the ease with which I can change tactics in a few seconds when I realize my plan is going poorly.

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This game is really good, I would love to see more from you.

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Fast and fun game for people who used to play a lot to strategy games but don't have enough time today like me ;)

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Love it- it's surprisingly addictive!  But I'd like to see a difficulty/challenge slider, and I feel like I'm not alone in this, since I'm seeing a lot of comments that are saying either "it was too easy" or "AHHH Make the monsters Staaaahp!" Honestly... I'm kinda in the latter camp, but that's not really the point.

Good game for an occasional evening of diversion. I did encounter some bugs, though (besides the alien ones that spawn to kill you :D)

1) The aliens sometimes get stuck inside the spawners and then just sit there.

2) Probably part of (1), but path-finding is flawed, causing things to get stuck. For example, aliens will go after a turret in a mostly straight line and not go around obstacles in the way.

3) As a consequence of (2), players can exploit it by building unfinished turrets in front of finished turrets, and never complete them. Aliens will go after the finished turret, bump in to the unfinished ones, and then just sit/stand there while the finished turret(s) kill them.

(1 edit)

How do you add more crew members

Hey there,

You can rescue additional units on planets which have a Distress Beacon. Find the escape pod on the planet, and open it using an Engineer.

Hope that helps, you can see more in the how to play video:

thanx

Really nice game 

Hope you make more games like this

(+3)

I'm having an issue. I just installed this on Linux, more specifically Debian Unstable, x86_64, but with i386 architecture support as well (for Steam and Steam games).

This game launches, and I see a menu screen with an animation of a rocket and with music, and there's a custom mouse pointer. However, clicking on the buttons has no effect. Using cursor keys doesn't seem to do anything either. I have to switch to a console window to close the game.

(+1)

You need to figure out how to launch it out of fullscreen mode, idk how, but that's what causes the issue usually

(+4)(-1)

I bought this game a good while back, but just wanted to say I really like it! Very fun to multitask in. I recorded a full playthrough for anyone interested in seeing it beginning to end without commentary (pretty much taking a straight path to the end): 

The only quality of life improvements that would be nice is being able to click on the minimap to move the camera around, and a hotkey for a 5th worker. I did change the 'Shift+Number' unit selection to just be a number which makes it a lot easier.

Good work!

(4 edits) (+2)

Feedback: It's a fun game but I have some suggestions. (Maybe for your next game!)

Lots of people have mentioned issues with the key layout. Since we switch character more often than we build, I don't think it makes sense to use Shift when switching character. We could put characters on plain 1,2,3,4, and for building/launching we could use Shift-1,2,3,4 or 7,8,9,0 or letter keys.

Sometimes I wanted to bring the character to the part of the map I am currently looking at (e.g. to meet up with a crew mate). But as soon as I select him, the camera moves to his location! One solution to that might be: Tab always jumps direct to the character's location. But when pressing 1,2,3,4 to select a character, the camera selects the player but doesn't jump to their location. Then I could press 2 and right-click, to bring the character onto the screen. If the key is pressed a second time (when the character is already selected), then the camera can jump to the player (e.g. by pressing 2, 2).

I found the difficultly ramped up a little strongly at first, but then it became too easy. The first three games I died very quickly on levels 2, 3 and 4 respectively. It felt painful to be slaughtered so quickly after landing, and then sent all the way back to the start. (The first level is a bit slow to keep repeating.) Basically I wanted the chance to retry the level. (Funnily you can replay the level, but only if you quit the game before the ship is destroyed!) Some arcade-style games used to allow 2 retries, and I think that could work here.

On my fourth play I understood the game better (and maybe had some luck), and I realised I could go back to earlier levels to stock up, so I slaughtered the creatures and completed the game! Perhaps having easy, medium, difficult modes could make it less painful for beginners, but add extra challenges (and secrets) for players who want to keep coming back.

I found my cannons were a bit weak. If I left them alone, they would quickly get destroyed before I could run across the map to heal them. (So my tactic was to put cannons beside the ship, and keep an engineer at the ship at all times. A bit boring!) Perhaps if the creatures did not attack the cannons (or only did so briefly) then I could be confident to place them anywhere, and they would work more like a tower defence, shooting at creatures as they pass by (and needing only occasional healing).

I was sad at the end, because I thought I could land in the wormhole. I thought I had one more location to play, but no, the game just ended on me! Perhaps make the wormhole look less like the landable planet locations. (E.g. make it larger, and not round. Don't label it like the planets are labeled.)

Anyway it was a cute and fun game to play overall. I enjoyed it. Thanks for making it!

Thanks for the feedback!

If you hadn't already found it, it is possible to customize the keybindings from the Options screen in order to change the character selection keys.

(2 edits)

Thanks. I did in the end just swap 1,2,3 with Shift-1, Shift-2, Shift-3. This works fine for me. I use Shift to build/act. I could recommend these as defaults for first time players.

Additional feedback! Sometimes one of my characters gets attacked off-screen while I am focusing on another one. I believe there is an indicator for that (pulsing green border?) but it would be great if it was more visible (perhaps a larger red pulse), and perhaps accompanied by a sound when it first occurs. Usually when I notice, it is too late!

Another thing that might help this is if fights lasted longer. For example, if all the actors do less damage, or all the actors have more health. That would give me time to respond when an attack happens. It would also mean less waiting between waves, because I would still be busy finishing off the previous wave! Obviously this would be a big change, but perhaps an interesting experiment.

(+1)

The game is cool and interesting. I recommend playing. I have one idea for an update. Adding a new turret that deals radius damage.

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Do you think you could compile it for x86_64 for linux as well? Thanks!

支持中文吗

(2 edits) (+1)

я в восторге от игры. однозначно рекомендую

из минусов: не хватает обучения в начале. Пришлось несколько раз проиграть, чтобы понять механику и логику

чуть позже, в комментарий скину следующие серии

______

I am delighted with this game. I definitely recommend

lack of training at the beginning. I had to replay it several times to understand the mechanics and logic

later will add new series in comment to this post

Thanks for playing!

со второй серии пошла жара

____

the battle began from this episode

(+1)

SPACE IS SOOOOO COOOOOOOOOL


Nice video, thanks for playing! :)

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A cool concept, and it doesn't overstays its welcome! A tutorial would be nice, but I figured out pretty much everything during my first run. Finished on second :) Also the concept can be developed further, but even in this state the game manages to entertain for a few hours.

I would like to report a bug. I made two runs of the game. In the first one everything was okay, but, in the second one, every enemy who spawned on the map (The ones who dont spawn from caves, just wander around until agroed) where a boss

I'm not positive I understand your report, but I think you're saying that one of the planets you landed on had the harder enemies wandering around to start with? This is as designed, sometimes there are groups of weaker enemies, and sometimes there are the harder enemies, but fewer of them.

No, no. Every wanderer enemy in every planet after my second new game was a boss. Normal enemys only spawned from the caves.

I see... I think you just got (un)lucky :) It is random, so it's possible it might happen sometimes.

(+1)

Fun game, thanks a lot :)

Fun little game but the Mac version is almost unplayable past the 3rd or 4th planet since performance drops so much as you explore more and more of a planet

Sorry that the performance is poor on your machine, can you provide me your system specifications?

Something you can try is reducing the graphics resolution or quality level in the Options, to see if that helps with performance.

Sure,  im on Catalina 10.15.6, 32 GB Ram, graphics card is Radeon pro 555X 4GB.


Unfortunately i already set my settings as low as possible on the 2nd/3rd planet due to this issue. It helped a little bit on that planet, but it wasn't a permanent fix. 

Привет. Игра классная, но без обучения немного трудно освоиться. Успехов в развитии этой игр

i wish there are tutorials. I had a hard time figuring out the controls. I really enjoy it. 

Deleted 1 year ago

Unzip the game to a folder of your choice, and double click FromOrbit.exe

~ I really enjoy the ability to switch classes on the fly.

~ Would be useful if a medic could revive a fallen crew member rather than just lose them.

~ A sandbox mode would be fun.

~ With the ship and crew having equal importance, ship upgrades would be useful.

how to play?

I'm totally lost, too.  I don't play many RTS games, so all I was able to figure out was how to move my units.

Thanks for checkout out the game! Since a few people have asked, I've put together a How To Play video. I hope it helps.

Very cool idea and well polished.  Definitely feels like a lot of thought and work went into the game, though if I had a single criticism it would be that the upgrades are straightforward to a fault.  

This has been a very cute and very fun game. Clarity is the only thing it really struggles with. With a bit more polish in the UI/UX department I could see this being a regular play for me.

(+1)

It is a wonderfull game, i really enjoyed playing, but it would be nice to have a pause time feature as the team grows it's kinda hard to manage, so i think a time freeze feature would be nice for people that can't really handdle that much pressure

So far i like this game a lot, the only thing missing were control instructions

So, my roomie's virus scanner found a virus in the zip file for your game…

Not sure if this is a false positive, or if it was infected after arriving.
Just posting it here in case you want to double check on your end, or if it is a known false positive.

(+2)

Hey there, thanks for the heads up. I believe this is a false positive. I'd never heard of Segurazo so I did a search and it appears that Segurazo is itself malware that does not function as advertised, and nearly every result is people seeking help in uninstalling it:

  • Segurazo PUP refers to a questionable anti-virus program that is classified as a potentially unwanted program (PUP) by many legitimate anti-virus programs. According to user reports, the program installs without explicit permission from users, and is difficult to remove.

That's not good…

Thanks for letting me know, I'll tell my roomie.

if level one difficulty is this hard i cant even begin to imagine how hard the later levels are. When i first played this game i wondered why the average session length was 30 minutes, I later found thats its because after 2 levels of being thrown to the wolves the will to want to play goes down. I will still play this game because i like a challange but i would recommend rethinking what a level meter means in terms difficulty as first planet level 1 threat is not the same as 2nd planet level 1 threat level. I think you should start with three players rather than 2 as I would be able to try a strat then just placeing down a turret and leaving an engineer there and then use the other guy to go get ore

My first three games I thought it was pretty tough, I didn't like being dropped into a difficult new level, dying and being sent back to the start.

But on my fourth game, I completed it!

My strategy was to pick up more crew members from the distress beacons. When I was low on crew or on resources, I would go back and play an earlier level planet.

I surrounded my ship with strong turrets, and kept one character repairing them. My crew couldn't fight very well, so they just had to hide and sneak past enemy lines.

(+1)

I LOVE the game man! I love how you can transform into different classes/types. I also love that there are many "planets" you can visit and gather resources. the artworks of the game is great and the controls are easy. oh, and it is also addictive to play! 

p.s game starts at 10:01

Had a lot of fun in From Orbit honestly. It took me a little bit to get a hang of things but I've already recorded a second episode and we get much father! :)

really fun RTS-TD hybrid i have not gotten far into the game but its a fun-tough game, i love it.

or whatever they are

how do i move the people

(+1)

Select the units using left-click, and order them to move somewhere with right-click.  Alternatively you can cycle through the units using the Tab key, or LB/RB when using a controller.

oh yay!a 100*/. off sale!(i have not played it yet though.)

My Secruity system norton looks at this game as a risk why Is that.

I couldn't say, possibly due to Unity being upgraded to a recently released version which Norton is not yet familiar with.

(2 edits)

This game shows up on https://itch.io/games/newest/on-sale/platform-windows/steam-key even though there isn't a Steam key? Or is there with minimum payment? I couldn't find anything...

 I have the game for over 2 months now and I didn't have the chance to try it out. But the graphics look cool! Nice work!

Steam keys are not given if you don't pay full price for any products on itch.io.

(1 edit) (+1)
Steam keys are not given if you don't pay full price for any products on itch.io.

Yeah I know but can I get one if I pay >=$14.99? I can't find a mention of this.

(+1)

Oh, I believe you should, yeah! Maybe contact the dev somehow to confirm this.

(+1)

Hey there, because the game is currently 100% off you can download for free, but this will not grant you a Steam key. However, purchasing for any amount ($1 or more) will grant a Steam key that you can claim.

(1 edit)

Sometimes I launch and a crew member iis left behind despite being within the evacuation range :( it’s especially galling when it happens after going to all the effort of getting a new crew member only to have the game bug out and leave it behind anyway.

Other than that game ruining problem, it’s actually pretty fun to play.

(1 edit)

Hi Tom, thanks for trying out the game and sorry for the frustration. Is this happening when you have 5 crew members active? There's actually a limit of 4 on the ship, but this isn't especially obvious in the UI. This will be addressed in a future update.

Oh wow, I had no idea, there aren’t any clues that there’s an upper limit on workers, I just assumed you could have as many as you wanted but that it would get harder to keep them and you had to put the effort in to find them and keep them alive :(

I’d make sure any place that mentions a crew count has /4 on the end, as well as any resource caps there might be

If you mouse over the ship launch buttons in the bottom-left during play, it warns that it can only take four crew members.

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