Little Orpheus, once an Apple Arcade exclusive, will be arriving on consoles this March, alongside the already announced PC release.
If you’ve never heard of Orpheus, the Greek hero is best known for journeying into the Underworld to rescue his wife, Eurydice. He was allowed to bring her back to the land of the living, as long as he didn’t look back till he left the Underworld. But, like an idiot, he looked back and she vanished.
What does this have to do with Ivan Ivanovich, protagonist of platform adventure Little Orpheus? Like Orpheus he’s on his own subterranean quest. Stranded in a hollow Earth, he has to elude all manner of creatures in order to escape and make his way back to the surface. And, given that the trailer shows you tangling with a T-Rex, we suspect that looking back can be bad news.
Little Orpheus is, surprisingly, by The Chinese Room, the team behind Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. It’s certainly a departure from its other titles, and not just because it’s a side-on platformer. It’s inspired by Flash Gordon, Sinbad, The Land that Time Forgot and other adventure movies.
Sadly, there’s no Brian Blessed but hopefully that won’t hold Little Orpheus back. But there will be plenty of environments to explore, including a particularly disturbing area where, as seen in the trailer, some sub-aquatic beast presses its eye against the window of whatever vessel or complex you’re in. That’s going to put us off going to the seaside for sure.
Little Orpheus will be hitting Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, PC and Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 on March 1st. In the meantime, you can wishlist the PC version on Steam and check out the above trailer.
