All Hail the Orb

If there’s one thing that I’ve learned from being on LinkedIn, it’s that in order to become rich, I need to grind. I’m talking about getting up early, staying up late and never having relationships or taking vacations. The kind of grind where there’s only one goal, and failure is not an option. Believe it or not, I thought a lot about this terrible advice while playing the new game All Hail the Orb. At its core, this is a game about grinding in order to become rich. And not just with money and treasure, but also prayers and the very essence of life. It’s a game where you’ll trick worshippers into free labor, all while you reap the rewards from their hard work. Does this game make the grind fun? Or is it as arduous as scrolling through your LinkedIn feed? That’s what we’re about to find out when I review All Hail the Orb.

I will confess, I wanted to touch the orb. I mean, it was practically begging me to click it. And when I did, out popped a little guy who floats around the screen and talks about how his master is still stuck in that orb. But don’t worry, the little guy has a plan. If I can help grow the orb big enough for it to crack wide open, good things would happen. Probably. I mean, there are no guarantees here.

Initially, that means literally clicking the orb. You get a small, crystalized prayer every time you click it. You can trade that devotion in to upgrade the prayers and earn more for every click, but the real trick is to summon followers who will do the praying for you. This is, more or less, the entire crux of this game. Growing that orb bigger revolves around you finding ways to earn many different types of currency and materials as quickly as possible.

You do this in a small, interconnected temple. The orb is right n the middle, but as you explore the different rooms and passageways, you’ll find new types of items to collect. There’s a place where you’ll gather up life essence, a farm where you can earn gold coins and a cave where you can mine for a very specific type of ore. You’ll start out earning only a few items per second, but as you upgrade the different parts of the temple, you’ll begin to earn more and more items. The trick is to juggle a half dozen different tasks, all while spending the currency to keep things moving.

Thankfully, this is not a game about mashing the buttons. You’ll need to do a lot of clicking early on, but so much of this game is about managing the worshippers and turning them into efficient little workers. There’s a whole room dedicated to turning the worshippers into specific classes, but most of the game you just want people harvesting life, beating on the orb and reading books for knowledge. Without those points, you won’t be able to upgrade the temple and unlock the next level, which will require even more money, prayers and knowledge.

In another part of the temple is a garden. This is where you can plant seeds and watch the mushrooms grow. Every type of plant will grow in a different pattern, with some being more valuable than others. This bit proves to be a bit more hands-on than the others, but even then, some of the later seeds will cause something of a chain reaction, growing more and more plants on the empty squares.

And yes, before you ask, you will have to spend the in-game currency on upgrading the garden. Every single part of this game is built around being upgraded. Not just to hold more of a specific type of item, but also to earn more and harvest faster. The faster you can earn the many different types of currency, the faster you can upgrade the temple. And the faster you upgrade the temple, the faster you’ll earn the various types of currency. It’s one big loop.

The problem with this kind of game is that, if it doesn’t hook you with the upgrade system, then the whole thing ends up feeling like a lot of busywork. The magic trick that games like this pull off is making everything so chaotic that you don’t have a chance to think about the repetition until it’s over. Every time the game suspects you’re about to get bored, they throw out a new mechanic or introduce a new room to tend to. There’s a whole late-game distraction that will have you researching new upgrades and technology, some of which you’ll have to combine in yet another time-wasting machine.

And, for the most part, this works. There was always something I could be tending to or upgrading, so the challenge was more about juggling everything than anything else. There really isn’t a way to lose this type of game, only slow it down. About the worst thing that can happen is you run into a lull where there’s nothing to upgrade and you have to wait for mushrooms to grow. This was the one section where the grind of the game started to get to me, and it’s really the only part of the grind that I would want streamlined or removed altogether.

Between the repetition and having one too many currencies to collect, I found myself wishing that All Hail the Orb had more story or lore. The grind is built around freeing whatever is in that orb, yet they never bother laying the groundwork for it. What should have been an exciting conclusion mostly lands with a thud, since I never really felt that connected to the game’s paper-thin narrative. I get that you’re often juggling a lot at once and any distraction might be seen as annoying, but there needed to be a little more to the story to really hook me.

I have a hunch that you’re either going to be fully invested in micromanaging this temple or you’re going to see the whole game as nothing more than monotonous busywork. If the core gameplay doesn’t click, then this is going to be a tedious few hours of gaming, all leading to a rather anticlimactic ending. However, if you’re like me and found this kind of grind to be strangely soothing and satisfying, then All Hail the Orb will keep you glued to the screen for hours on end. I recommend you ignore LinkedIn’s advice, take a vacation and join the masses who are hailing the orb.