Orb: The Derelict Planet

This is, basically, Metroid. An amateur Metroid, I grant you. And with a protagonist that rather baffles me; it’s basically an eye inside a glass orb. Still, hey. I guess the most distinctive element of Samus is her morph ball ability. And the most expressive Metroid game is the second one, in which you spend half of your time in ball form, rolling around the walls and ceilings.

Josh Turcotte did a good job here; Orb is one of the more complex and fully-featured Game-Maker games I’ve played, and also employs one of the most comprehensive storylines. Even the credits are uncommonly verbose:

This game wouldn’t be possible without my computer and a half ruined Microcassette recorder, a few good tapes, an excellent SoundBlaster system, a few new pens, a lot of graphpaper, and my very fat Norwegian Elkhound named Thor who was for most of the monsters in this game, and for a few of the sounds in the game, my inspiration. The rest of the monsters Merry, Pippin, and Isis… in order two loud parakeets and a pest of a cat, are responsible for. GAMEMAKER is, however, more responsible than any other for this master piece, and deserves due thanks from I as well as from any who enjoy playing this game.

Indeed. Anyway, the visuals are clean and attractive. The level design is actually pretty good, if about as confusing as the original Metroid. From the amount of original effort that went into this game I’d like to see what else Josh Turcotte got up to.