Back in 2020, Half-Life: Alyx developer Robin Walker told Katharine (RPS in peace) that one of the hardest things in first-person shooter development is persuading people to look up. “One of the problems you always run into in an FPS is that players are really good at looking horizontally with their mouse, but they don’t look up and down nearly as much,” said Walker. “You’ve really got to work to make a player look up in FPS games.”
You will definitely need to look up in Orbifold, a forthcoming shooter project from Hi-Rez programmer Chris Cullen. In this Unreal Engine 5 creation, firefights take place inside a giant, verdant ball akin to a miniature Dyson Sphere, but with no captive star. Players are gravitationally rooted to the exterior of the ball, meaning you can run all the way around the inside. There are also Halo-style launchers that punt you directly through the middle. Here’s a slice of very WIP footage featuring some airborne android nuisances.
