The unbearable melancholy at the heart of Orbital Blues

Orbital Blues is resplendently sad. You get the Blues — an actual stat in the game — when you’re struck by a wave of anguish from past grievances, guilt, or misdeeds. Perhaps this came from being a well-travelled space cowboy who has experienced firsthand the atrocities within the seedy underbelly of every planet in the Frontier Galaxy. Perhaps this was from an accidental act of violence that resulted from your own unbridled rage. Blues is the central currency for the narrative and rich storytelling in Orbital Blues; accumulating too much Blues means having too much turmoil, and you’ll need to confront the source of your interminable woes before you can proceed with your journey. It’s why Lin said that the game made them “so fucking sad”.

“I think I purged Orbital Blues out of myself like some kind of creative hairball,” said co-creator Sam Sleney in an email to Rascal. “There was a lot of mess inside of me [that] I had to get out or it was going to choke me. In itself it’s not the most original idea; it’s the Cowboy Bebop roleplaying game I always wanted as a teen, and an address of selling a little bit of yourself in employment that we all have to reckon with as adults. Those things are held together with this goo of frustration that I grew up poor and I know I’ll likely die poor too — there’s nothing coming to help.”