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On the face of it, Astro Bot is just more Astro’s Playroom, the same playful, readily-devoured platforming swelled to more than twice the size, charm and whimsy intact. But, by delivering a fully-fledged game spurred on by the riotously positive reception to what was, reductively, a tech demo, I’m thrilled to say Team Asobi is primed to put a smile on many a face, both young and old. Beyond responding to the clamour for more, Astro Bot is special, a beaming reminder that bright, unfettered play is a truly wonderful thing indeed.
You play as the titular Astro, a chirping, gleeful little robot. A toothy alien swoops in and ransacks a PlayStation 5 for its constituent parts, scattering them across half a dozen celestial hubs, each home to a distinct set of planets more playful and jam-packed with personality than the last. Your task is to find these pieces. It’s a basic foundation but one that’s easy to get behind as Astro Bot almost immediately bursts free of these restrictive narrative reins. There are countless ideas condensed into every planet, shored up by enough purposeful artistic vision to fuel a dozen games. They very nearly burst with secrets and surprises.
Astro’s basic moveset remains unchanged: jump, hover, and whack. But Astro Bot introduces new mechanics in abundance, framing each thoughtfully crafted level at its own standalone platforming puzzle, a bite-sized epiphany generator. In one level, you’ll shrink down to a mouse and back again at will to wedge through air vents and under duvets. In another, you’ll fire off a paintball-spewing pistol loaned by a certain intrepid treasure chaser. There’s another where you’ll strap a puffing cow to your back and waft up sky-high to cushion on doughy clouds.
These abilities never feel out of place, porting over the same wacky coherence of Playroom but embellished and improved for one of the most razor-sharp platforming experiences this side of a Nintendo console. It subverts expectations and rewards curiosity to delight and awe in equal measure. Everywhere you turn, there are details to marvel at and things to jab, press, and nudge. The environment bewitchingly flexes to your every move. The splashes, the quivering fabrics, the sensory variety and fidelity of the DualSense in your palms, the satisfying ping of pegs flying off a clothesline – everything feels charmingly interactive, tuned to you as the player.
Replete with that inventive spark that coursed through Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot exudes the same nourishing lightness as old-school platformers.
Then, there are the references and cameos from PlayStation’s stacked history. I’ll omit any meaty details here as they are best experienced first-hand, but they’re to the tune of entire levels dedicated to, say, a certain sinewy Greek god or a gaggle of flighty apes. While Playroom mimicked this, Astro Bot delves deeper and more obscure, a glorious nod to the past and a tasteful helping of fan service. It’s lovely. And so are the tunes, including a tree trunk crooning a funky thank you for Astro’s help and other catchy head nodders.
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Captured by VideoGamer
Bottled nostalgia
Replete with that inventive spark that coursed through Astro’s Playroom, Astro Bot exudes the same nourishing lightness as old-school platformers. For me, it dredged up gentle memories of early morning clandestine sessions of Crash Bandicoot before lumbering off to school. All those hours spent playing a battered second-hand PlayStation on an equally crummy CRT TV that needed a determined jab to get the screen to flicker on. Simpler times. Astro Bot makes me feel old, a little sad, a little nostalgic – so much for a ‘children’s’ game – but lucky to be in a position to appreciate how far games have come.
But amid the endless graphical fidelity one-upmanship and the drive for bulging ‘content’ feasts, maybe we’ve lost something along the way. That raw simplicity, that rough-and-ready magic that makes those janky early 3D platformers such potent nostalgic kindling. Astro Bot manages to bottle up that same sense of pure, unadulterated play, spruced up by the modern trimmings afforded by the PS5. If only we had the same seamless, masked loading screens and the DualSense’s tactile fizz back then. Now, we do, sort of. Astro Bot feels like how we remember those times, not necessarily how they felt at the time. It captures the spirit of dusty memories warped by rose-tinted, reality-skewing nostalgia.
As I sit here wrapping up the last few levels with my ten year old, passing the controller when we inadvertently plunge off a cliff or get clipped by an erratic projectile, I’m convinced that only the most hard-hearted killjoy will find Astro Bot anything short of delightful.
Reviewed on PlayStation 5. Code provided by the publisher.
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