Orb Arena: the first mini game

A month after the first experiment went up, there’s a second — and this one is a game: Orb Arena.

It’s a pocket-sized auto-battler. You pick one of five fighters — Blade and his orbiting sword, Venom lobbing poison pools, the Assassin’s returning blade, the Vampire’s latching fangs, or Spike and his wall of thorns — then step back and let physics decide. There are no controls. The pick is the whole game: every matchup plays differently, and counterpicks matter more than reflexes.

Why ship something this small

Because it’s finishable. The flagship is a long build, and a studio that only ever shows renders and promises is just a marketing account. A mini game with a beginning, a middle, and a winner — even a tiny one — is the honest proof that this place ships.

Orb Arena also exercised the whole pipeline end to end: landing page, cover art, play pages, phone handling. Everything a real release needs, tested on something small enough to fix fast.

The honest state

Fights are against the AI only. Balance is a first pass — some matchups are crueller than they should be, and the roster may grow. The beta label is not decorative.

Update — the roster doubled

On August 21 five new fighters joined: Lucky, who rams his own trucks to level them up; Spider, who spins permanent silk lines across the arena; One-Punch, who spends 40 seconds charging and then kills with a single touch; Train King, who lays rail on the walls and departs a train; and Card Master, who fires cards whose damage equals their face value. Ten fighters, forty-five matchups — the counterpick game just got a lot more interesting.