t’s the PlayStation 5’s next big game, and Sony is in its DNA – but nonetheless there’s something very Nintendo about Astro Bot. It’s in the way that the game is designed so perfectly around the controller that you play with, taking advantage of all the DualSense controller’s bells and whistles. The spacey aesthetic, where different planets represent different colourful worlds to jump into, recalls Super Mario Galaxy. And there’s also the sense of pure joy that you feel when you play it.
“I think Sony has the mindset of coolness in its product design, but there is also playfulness,” says Nicolas Doucet, the studio director at Team Asobi, the Japanese studio behind Astro Bot. “They’re not mutually exclusive, or seen as antagonistic… The hardware team really liked it, nobody was being precious.
The first Astro Bot game, Rescue Mission, was the best thing ever made for PlayStation’s VR headset, a clever platformer bursting with novel ideas.was a treat packaged with the PS5 when it was released in 2020, designed to show off what Sony’s new console and its controller could do.
It is extremely cute and funny, and packed with playful detail – I discovered that I could slice up wooden logs with the blast of flame from Astro’s jetpack, for no reason other than that it’s fun, and when I jumped on to a turtle to see if I could ride on its back, Astro adopted a confident surfing pose. When I found a secret room after tickling some sad-looking anemones, I was greeted with a chorus of “seee-cret!”.
Team Asobi is relatively small – about 65 people – and relatively international. Three-quarters of the team is Japanese, says Doucet, and the rest represent 16 different nationalities. Some worked on previous PlayStation projects such as Shadow of the Colossus or Gravity Rush, but others came in fresh. They are all invested in earning Astro Bot true PlayStation mascot status, says Doucet. “We want Astro to grow into a really powerful franchise – we want to elevate this little guy,” he tells me.
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