Crossbeam Studios Entertainment is a small group of independent developers who are currently working on a few titles: 'Darkness' is one such title, a tale of vampires over-running the world, and another is still unnamed. However, the studio's main focus at this time is 'Orb', a game that they hope will be heading to the Nintendo Revolution.



Orb is an action/adventure game that features RPG elements such as masses of customisation and an intrinsic plot. Crossbeam have been designing and testing the game for the best part of 5 years, and have finally decided that the game would be best suited to Nintendo Revolution, but unfortunately, they have yet to get a hold of a software development kit. They are ploughing on with a demo version for PC in the hope of attracting Nintendo's interest and admiration, as well as impressing publishers in the future to enable them to get a hold of an elusive SDK so that they might switch development over to Revolution. The team are confident that they could utilise just about any unique feature that Nintendo might throw at us with their new console.

The storyline goes that there was a great war between two nations, Kulon and Delphire. Those from Kulon destroyed all, including women and children, and one of the fiercest warriors of their army decides to crown himself ruler of the land. From this position of power, he goes a bit 'megalomaniac' (to put it lightly) and decides that he wants to control absolutely everything about everybody's lives, including their beliefs. To do this, one of the world's Imanti, the 'Guardians of Faith', must be captured. However, it doesn't go without a hitch ? the Imanti that they abduct has three students, who are adamant that they will get him back. As is often the case, though, things are not all that they seem and things are a lot more complicated than they first appear...

Orb promises at least 30 highly detailed main locations with over 70 interconnecting areas, along with detailed weapon and magic systems. There are to be 6 playable characters that can each wield one of five weapons, which in turn can all be customised into 15 separate forms. Of course, these characters are not the only ones to feature in the game ? there are over 50 secondary characters and over 100 tertiary characters, too. A vast world history including culture, religion, magic and landscapes has also been written from scratch over a period of around 4 years - with this amount of detail, it's no wonder that the game has received praise with a 'Best In Class' award during university, beating out 120 other projects due to quality of dialogue, characters and an abundance of creativity, even receiving a huge compliment in being compared to Nintendo's own 'Legend Of Zelda' series.

To show how much is going into the game, these beautiful pieces of concept art have been released. Click the thumbnails below to see the full-sized images.









As if that wasn't enough, we also have an MP3 sample of some of the music in the game. Right click and 'save as' to download it and listen.

Orb - 'Lore Of Shadows' MP3 Sample

You can find Crossbeam Studios Entertainment's official website on the link below. Please feel free to show your support for Orb either on our own or CSE's forums:

Crossbeam Studios Entertainment Official Site


Update: We have received further artwork that sheds some light on some of the characters, as well as the first (test) screenshot! To re-iterate, this is a model test, not an in-game shot.







We have been granted an interview with a developer at Crossbeam Studios regarding Orb, so keep your eye on C3 for it soon!

Stick with Cubed3 for more information as we get it...