Cocoon Review- The World on its Shoulders

When you think about some of the most impressive puzzle games of all time, your mind may jump to the Portal series or The Witness. These are the games that really expanded the genre by introducing mind-bending challenges, some of the best ‘a-ha’ moments in gaming and by forcing players to really think outside the box. Cocoon, the latest game published by Annapurna Interactive, manages to achieve all of these and more. You may not initially think so with its simplistic control style and small, bug protagonist, but Cocoon delivers some of the most complex and mind-blowing puzzles I’ve ever experienced. Put simply, it’s a game that certainly deserves to be spoken about in the same breath as the greats of the genre.

Image by Geometric Interactive

Gameplay

Of course, with Cocoon being a game designed to test your puzzle-solving skills, its gameplay is the main draw. While the trailers may have interested you with a look at a unique alien landscape, the main selling point is its world-orbs. In Cocoon, you carry around several different spheres that contain whole new worlds that you can jump into at certain points. That means that certain puzzles can be solved by using one orb as a power conduit for a platform while traveling over the gap with another orb, which you can use to power a bridge to get that other orb across.

While a novel idea, the aspect that makes this truly mind-blowing is the ability to enter (and place down) spheres within other spheres. This means you can place down one sphere, jump into another, and then jump into another, before then jumping out and carrying each of those worlds within one orb. While it sounds confusing, the way that Cocoon introduces and builds upon these ideas is never frustrating but instead really racks your brain to come up with some clever solutions. This type of puzzle design is crafted to make you think outside of the box- or orb in this case- in a way that makes you feel like a genius every step of the way, even if it can take a while for some of the tricker puzzles.

The game also benefits from a simplistic control scheme of a control stick and one button- meaning its very easy to play this with one hand if you so wish. With no jumping, other action buttons or unnecessary abilities, Cocoon remains streamlined and focused for its 4–5-hour runtime- which is welcome amongst the huge 100+ hour games that 2023 keeps throwing at us. These controls also prevent players from just spamming buttons and abilities if they don’t know the solution to a puzzle. With a very limited array of movement and interactivity, each problem only has one solution, which may seem like a negative but, in fact, it benefits this type of game tremendously. This is a puzzle game that manages to make you think without ever becoming frustrating- which is a balance that not many in the genre manage to achieve.

Image by Geometric Interactive

Story

If you’ve ever played previous games from developers ‘Playdead’, you may be aware of their storytelling techniques. While this game was created by Geometric Interactive as opposed to Playdead, the director, Jeppe Carlsen, who was responsible for the hit games ‘Limbo’ and ‘Inside’. As a result, you may not be surprised to find that the narrative in Cocoon takes a backseat and is much more implied than a lot of games- with the story really picking up in the final act. If you’re a fan of making up fan theories and trying to unravel the limited lore of these games, however, then Cocoon’s eerie alien world is worth taking a closer look.

In Cocoon, you seemingly play as a futuristic bug-robot creature that begins running around just seconds after being born from, you guessed it, a Cocoon. From here, without context, you traverse the world by collecting multiple-coloured orbs to attempt to obtain more orbs containing more worlds. Beyond this, your overall goal is not told to you at all. With many games of this type, the story really picks up in the last 10%, where a little more is revealed. However, for most of the game, Cocoon is content to focus on the puzzles and visuals- which is common in a lot of puzzle games for a reason. Although it would have been nice to have a little more direction, that may have taken away from the atmosphere of the game- and that was something worth preserving.

Image by Geometric Interactive

Presentation

Cocoon’s world is one with equal amounts of beauty as eeriness. With hauntingly empty locales with nothing but a minimal score and the distant chirps of robotic insects, the areas you traverse feel alien in a way that shifts from wonder to unease. The game also just looks fantastic on a purely visual level. With the captivating art style drawing you into this bizarre but beautiful world, you’ll find yourself wanting to solve the puzzles as quickly as possible to see what the developers have for you around the corner. Coupling a minimalistic soundtrack and worlds devoid of non-robotic life, Cocoon manages to deliver on its haunting atmosphere at every turn.

With the main concept of the game being jumping between different worlds (which can also be within their own worlds), it could easily get confusing on a visual level. However, this is an area in which the developers have excelled. The simple spherical orbs that stand out from their environment, which makes it incredibly easy to know what parts of the level you can or can’t interact with. This prevents frustration from players constantly butting their head on a solution that would never work and is such an underrated part of game design for the genre. It also shows just how much the visual design excels by complimenting the gameplay greatly rather than hindering.

Image by Geometric Interactive

In many ways, Cocoon is a very simple game. From a two-button control scheme to its short runtime and one-solution puzzles, there may not initially seem to be much meat on its bones. However, as you slowly work your way up the ladder of deep and interesting puzzles, you’ll soon realize just how clever Cocoon is. Its on the same level as masterpieces like Portal thanks to its mind-bending world-shifting ideas, and its all tied up in a beautiful but eerie world. When a game creates an atmosphere that keeps you hooked even without a clear story, its succeeded in an impressive way- and that’s just what Cocoon manages to do. By the end, after countless deep puzzles with amazing ‘a-ha’ moments, you’ll realize that Cocoon delivers on its premise and more- and it makes me very excited to see what Geometric come out with next.