Did you like Astro’s Playroom? I sure did. In fact, the worst thing I can say about it is that there wasn’t enough of it – I finished all five of its levels and the final boss battle in a single evening. But as if in response to my hunger for more from PlayStation’s newest mascot, developer Team Asobi has opened the floodgates to Astro Bot, a game that seems to be everything I’ve ever wanted in Playroom, but galaxies more of it.
I played a 45 minute demo of Astro Bot at the Summer Game Fest Play Days over the weekend and what a blast it was! What Astro’s Playroom did right, and what Astro Bot absolutely continues to achieve, is making it super fun to run around and be Astro. Everything has been fine-tuned to feel just right: his movement speed, his jump height and distance, the precise way he hits small crates and hits enemies with foot lasers, the density of obstacles in the way mine and the exact way each stage follows a linear path but branches and loops back on itself to make room for secrets. Running through a single level in Astro Bot clicks my brain cells into a flow state where I’m constantly moving and always have a goal in mind, but I don’t feel overwhelmed by my options. I like to break things; I like to jump on things; I like to jump off things.
Where Astro’s Playroom had five main levels loosely themed around PlayStation 5 components, Astro Bot sends our little hero sailing through space on a giant DualSense controller, jumping from planet to planet in search of mates his lost robots. I’m told that Astro Bot has about 80 levels to visit, all filled with hidden worlds, puzzle pieces, boss battles, weird powers, coins, and little challenges that lead to cool secrets.
I saw five levels in my game. One, a lush area with clear pools, pink flamingos and rolling green hills in the distance, was full of water-based mechanics. I swam through small reefs of colorful fish, slid down a giant water slide, and popped giant water bubbles to release the flood inside. There, Astro can inflate like a small robot bubble to quickly move to higher areas, a particularly useful ability underwater. In another level themed around a construction zone, Astro splashed paint around to reveal hidden platforms, absorbed metal objects with giant magnets, and equipped a sort of canine jetpack to zoom long distances his suspension wouldn’t normally cover. usual.
Another level centered around a boss fight with a giant octopus wearing boxing gloves. To make up for it, I grabbed a pair of my own frog-themed gauntlets, which let Astro hit ranged enemies and swing like a monkey from a few lines. Another (wildly minor) criticism I had of Astro’s Playroom was that some of its power-up/vehicle sections let me down due to heavy movement mechanics while trying to showcase the PS5’s unique features. Freed from that obligation, Astro Bot is better able to focus on delivering new toys that are simply fun to use. Quick, hard, alternating strikes using R1 and R2 made me feel like I was fighting Goku with the octopus and sent him packing.
The last two stages I tried were special challenge levels designed to test my platforming skills. One of them tested my ability to dodge rapidly spinning enemies on crumbling platforms, while another forced me to execute tricky jump sections in limited time periods. I was able to complete both in the allotted time for the demo, though not without difficulty on the first one. It’s hard to gauge from these two stages alone how high Astro Bot’s platforming difficulty will ultimately scale. But what pleased me most about them was how the quick cooldown and overall brevity of the stages made trying again and again and again so easy and enjoyable. I found myself thinking, “Just one more try,” more than once, only to try two, three, ten more times. There was a moment towards the end of the demo where I stopped, looked around and realized that everyone else had already left the room. Just one more try… and I made it.
And yes, Astro Bot seems to be a nostalgia fest. Of course, when compared to Playroom, I think Astro Bot seems a bit more focused on being a great platformer than reveling in PlayStation history. But that’s to its benefit – levels like thin/flamingo don’t need to have Bloodborne references every two feet to keep me happy. Instead, Astro Bot’s PlayStation celebration rests largely on the robots you’re rescuing in each level, some of which are dressed up as favorites like Ratchet, Rivet, PaRappa and more. And I have reason to suspect that fans of the biggest PlayStation franchises might be well rewarded for completing certain levels. When I beat the octopus, for example, I rescued a pair of bots dressed as Kratos and Atreus, who then flew off to an icy-looking planet that I couldn’t access in the demo. If my reading is correct, we could have a full God of War themed level in the full game, and maybe more besides.
When Team Asobi first started making Astro games, it was easy for me to mentally make a brief comparison of their work to Nintendo’s long history of platforms. Both have similar traits, especially with how they both make games that feel like tactile, experiential toys and how they both emphasize play, joy, and surprise. But I’m pretty sure Team Asobi is beyond following Nintendo’s origins. Built on the foundation of Astro’s Game Room, Astro Bot looked poised to elevate Astro games into a league of their own, if they weren’t already there. Are you telling me they have 80 levels of what I just played? Sign up to fly with Astro and the crew.
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. Got a story tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.