Review by Matthewbot

Orbit racers is a decent racing game, and quite fun. It is very unique in the controls department: The entire game is played by using the space bar!
Don't let it turn you off, however. The game is very carefully designed around this barrier. So well, in fact, you could almost call the one key design a feature.

== Graphics (8/10) - Excellent ==
The many courses on the game have plenty of scenery, be it rocks, trees, sea lions (or at least, I think thats what they are), etc. Graphics are simple, but quite colorfull. Main complaint is lack of animation. Most of the scenery is just a single sprite, or a 2 frame animation. Special effects are next to none, except for an explosion effect that looks identical to the one in the Robot Cats from Mars.

== Sound (6/10) - Great ==
Sound effects are well picked, and don't get annoying. Background music fit the theme of the stage, whether it was in space, in a forest, or whatever. Still, nothing that stuck with me after the game was over, and didn't create much atmosphere.

== Gameplay (8/10) - Excellent ==
The gameplay is nicely done, with the one key twist I mentioned earlier. You and several AI players zoom around the circular course. Space veers you away from the center of the circle, release it, and you dip towards it. The main challenge in the racing is hitting the boost pads, and avoiding the obstacles. My main complaint are the obstacle's collisions. They are handled in an un-buggy fashion, but they are very unforgiving. Instead of just exploading, then starting again, you hit it, bounce a few pixels back, hit it again, bounce a few pixels back. Another problem is that while tracks may look different, the one key control restricts them all to being a circle. Not only that, but it seems like your ship speeds up as it gets farther away from the center, so that being close to the center doesn't give you an advantage. This was quite counter-intuitive for me, and I lost many races before I realized it. On the good side, there are several powerups that occasionaly appear, and the computers use them too. Overall, these are minor flaws, and the game is still quite fun and challenging.

== Presentation (8/10) - Great ==
The title screen is just a menu, where you can pick a league to compete in (Again, using only the space bar). You start off with only one unlocked, when you get first place, you earn the next league. Each one steps up the difficulty rather smoothly, though the game starts out pretty hard on the first league. One thing I just do not get is the complete lack of a multiplayer mode! C'mon, with the one key controls, you could have 4 people on a keyboard, no problem. Theres no storyline in the game, but racing game's don't really need them. It does, however, include Last Man Standing Mode, and Survival Mode, both of which are very hectic and fun.

== Originality (7/10) - Great ==
Well, the one key control is pretty unique, as well as the circular tracks. No ripped graphics or anything, either. But theres no stroryline, characters, or anything. Not that a racer really needs these, but it couldn't hurt to throw in a little something other than going around in circles 10 times.


== Overall (7.4/10) - Great ==
This game comes a long way to being the ideal racer. In fact, just by tweaking collisions slightly, and maybe adding a multiplayer mode, the game probably would! It's still pretty fun, and quite challenging. BTW, this rating is just an average of the above 5 scores, where 10 is nearly commercial quality, and 1 is... really bad. It's Completely seperate from staff ratings. To see how those work, click here

== Author's Description ==
Overhead racing game in the style of Super Sprint

11 tracks
4 Leagues
Survival Mode,
Last Man Standing Mode,

Powerups, great AI, original gameplay.