Review: Little Orpheus

destructoid.com:

As somebody who has had their Apple Arcade subscription since launch and who uses their iPad every single day, it’s a bit embarrassing to say that I somehow completely missed Little Orpheus. From developer The Chinese Room, best known for Dear Esther and Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs, the game hit the service back in July 0f 2020. Maybe I was just too distracted by the pandemic to pay attention to it, but a lot of other game sites didn’t miss out on it, bestowing the game with end-of-the-year awards and pretty good reviews. 

I guess it’s fortunate for me that this one is breaking out of the Apple Arcade sphere with its release tomorrow on consoles and PC because now I get a chance to play the game exactly how it should be played: on a big screen.

Little Orpheus (Apple Arcade, PC, PS4, PS5 [reviewed], Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S)Developer: The Chinese RoomPublisher: Secret ModeReleased: June 12, 2020 (Apple Arcade), March 1, 2022MSRP: $12.99

Little Orpheus is a narrative-driven adventure platformer set in a land lost to time. Playing off Edmond Halley’s debunked theory of the Hollow Earth concept, the game recounts the adventure of a cosmonaut Ivan Ivanovich, a name with historical precedent, as he explores a subterranean world during the space-race age of the Soviet Union. Aboard his ship is the titular Little Orpheus, a nuclear-powered bomb used to power the drill that took him through the earth’s rocky crust. After crashing into this forgotten world, Ivan has to travel across distant and weird lands to retrieve the bomb from others who’ve found their way to this secret world.

Or, he’s just making it all up, Scheherazade-style, to keep himself from getting executed.

Ivan’s journey is presented as a flashback,