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.