In the music industry, years into its career, a band often uses a self-titled album to signify a reinvention. “This is who we are today’ is the intended and unspoken message. PlayStation’s Astro Bot uses the same naming convention to indicate a similar fresh start. After a 2018 VR exclusive with a decidedly limited scope and a 2020 game that Team Asobi’s studio head and creative director Nicolas Doucet considers a “tech demo,” 2024’s simply titled Astro Bot feels like it’s ready to bring the cute robot to to launch the top of the busy PlayStation pantheon.
“It’s actually called Astro’s Playroom [that] so it wouldn’t be mistaken for an Astro Bot-sized game,” Doucet told me after a demo in which I beat several levels, rescued many PlayStation characters reimagined as robots, and defeated a boss in the form of a boxing cephalopod. ” Many people don’t actually know the Astro universe outside of Astro’s Playroom, so for starters [here] naming it Astro Bot made perfect sense as a new beginning.”
Doucet said the VR game’s success convinced the team to revisit the Astro Bot world with the PS5 pack-in that followed, and they thought that if a wider audience still If at that moment they fell in love with the mascot and their world, it was best to go with something else. Astro Bot is something different.
From what I played, the differences between Astro Bot and its predecessors are obvious in some ways and subtle in others. The different levels I experienced took me across beaches like those in Astro’s Playroom and a construction site that hung high above the clouds just like in Rescue Mission, but these familiar landscapes were also noticeably denser and the overworld looked more like something out of LittleBigPlanet, where I could pilot a jet-powered DualSense from planet to planet as I unlocked levels, bonus challenges, and more.
My favorite part of the game is the ability to feel almost clairvoyant. Every time I experimented with the environment by smashing parts of it, climbing very high, or hiding in a corner expecting to find a secret, I found one. The levels have a masterful way of guiding me down their proper path, but also indicate where I can be rewarded if I go down the B, C, or even D path. I’d find coins to spend or more bots dressed as Ratchet, Rivet, Kratos, and more from the game’s 150-plus cameos, a number Doucet revealed to me.
This constant cycle of exploration and reward fits very well with the game’s mechanics, which remain as tight as before and bring in a few new DualSense toys. I don’t want to just turn over every stone for the secrets I might come across; I just want to keep playing the game, because that’s what it is feels so good to play.
“We’ve doubled down on DualSense,” Doucet said, adding that the game adds about 15 new power-ups in total, only “three or four” of which are shown in the debut trailer. One of these is Astro Bot’s ability to turn into a sponge, which uses adaptive triggers as you wring the robot dry to give you the feeling of becoming lighter. In my demo I also equipped a rocket-powered dog in a backpack, which shot me horizontally over some of the larger gaps or let me smash through some obstacles. In my hands the triggers returned strongly to imitate the thrusters.
But the cleverest use case I learned (although I didn’t experience it in my demo) is a trick with the texture of some objects. Walls can hide hollow points with secrets on the other side, and as Astro grazes against these borders, reaching out and touching them like Nathan Drake going through a door frame, the feedback on the controller can point out these secrets. For completionists, I suspect these will prove to be the trickiest, but perhaps most satisfying collectibles in the game. “We don’t use it, tons and tons of it,” Doucet added. “We only use this feature a little, but enough to create that magical moment.”
After two games that were beloved but limited in different ways, 2024’s Astro Bot seems destined to be full of magical moments. It will launch exclusively on PS5 on September 6.