A beetle protagonist emerges into a gorgeous, lonely world. There’s no preamble, no textual content overlays; not even a touch of what you’re meant to do subsequent. So, you stroll. After discovering your technique to a small staircase, you descend, and the steps disappear into the bottom — a silent cue that you just’re on the correct path. Just a few paces additional, you uncover a purple pad, and as you stand on it, your iridescent wings start to quiver. With out interested by it, you press a button in your controller, the pad turns inexperienced, and a close-by rock transforms into a brand new staircase. Progress!
After fixing a few rudimentary puzzles, you’ll encounter an orb — these are the guts (and the physique) of this recreation. You carry them in your beetle again, initially utilizing them as keys to open doorways and resolve puzzles, earlier than discovering that inside each orb is a brand new world of puzzles and challenges to beat.
Cocoon is the primary recreation from Geometric Interactive, a studio based in 2016 by Jeppe Carlsen and Jakob Schmid. Each are alums of Playdead, the Danish studio behind Limbo and Inside, for which Carlsen labored as lead gameplay designer. In the event you’ve performed both of these video games, Cocoon’s quietly spectacular intro might sound acquainted. Each have been side-scrolling puzzle-platformers that used their environments and challenges to concurrently inform a narrative and information their gamers. The story is way the identical right here, however Cocoon’s construction of layered, interconnected worlds showcases one other degree of maturity and artistry.
The sport truly opens inside the orange orb, a beautiful desert world, and expands out from there. Every world is protected by a guardian, which must be defeated with a purpose to absolutely unlock the orb’s energy exterior of that world. Unlocking the orange orb, for instance, permits you to stroll on hidden paths whereas carrying it. Every orb grants its personal powers, and all are important to development.
The guardians are the sport’s “boss fights.” Although there isn’t any conventional fight, every guardian is definitely combative, and there’s a diploma of ability and timing required to finest them. One of many later encounters did truly journey me up a number of instances, which is nearly as good a time as any to say that Cocoon has completely no fail state. Getting tagged by a guardian doesn’t harm, they merely throw you exterior of their orb — hop again in and also you’ll return to the encounter inside a few seconds. Likewise, you possibly can’t mess a puzzle as much as the purpose that it’s essential reload.
In isolation, the guardians are most likely the sport’s weakest moments, however they do present a pleasant break from the puzzle-solving alongside a little bit of visible spectacle. That is broadly a lovely recreation to see and listen to, filled with vivid pastel hues and beds of synth pads, and in locations it’s surprisingly gross. What begins as a tranquil stroll by one thing approximating the American Southwest shortly devolves into goopy bio-horror, and I’m very right here for it. I began taking part in the sport on somewhat Ayaneo handheld PC, however about quarter-way by moved over to the Xbox — whereas it’s a enjoyable factor to play on a transportable, the artwork and sound design actually does profit from an enormous display screen and a few first rate audio system or headphones.
I feel the larger display screen truly helped me — although that is extra a evaluation of my eyesight than the sport — resolve puzzles sooner. Towards the top of the sport, you’ll end up actually disoriented as you soar out and in of worlds and portals, twisting the sport’s logic on its head to progress. I really feel like I’d’ve missed a few of the environmental cues — once more, my outdated eyes — had I been taking part in on a 6-inch display screen.
I solely actually obtained caught as soon as, once I spent an hour wandering round, making an attempt to determine what precisely I needed to do to unravel a puzzle. (The reply, as you’d count on, was blindingly apparent.) Cocoon doesn’t maintain your hand, however it’s a helicopter mother or father — in a great way! — gently hovering over you and pushing you in the correct path. There are environmental cues scattered round, and also you’ll discover all through that gates shut behind you at key moments. This prevented me from making an attempt to double-back to see if I’d missed one thing, an exercise that represents half of my playtime in comparable video games. Subtly locking you in an atmosphere is the sport’s approach of claiming “you have got every thing wanted to progress, so cease being so dense and determine it out.”
Cocoon is a recreation I can (and can) suggest to anybody that performs video video games, and many who don’t. Maybe my solely grievance is that I would like extra. The sport solely truly introduces, to my rely, six core mechanics, and every of these are combined, matched and remixed in actually artistic methods. I admire a recreation being so long as its developer needs it to be, however the bones listed here are so good, so satisfying, that I can’t assist feeling it could actually maintain as much as extra orbs, extra puzzles.
That stated, the seven hours or so I spent with Cocoon are among the many most memorable of this decade, and I’ll positively be returning to it in a few years, as soon as my mind has purged the entire solutions to its puzzles.
Annapurna Interactive