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Since Cocoon’s reveal final yr, I’ve been excited to someday test it out. Coming from Jeppe Carlsen, a former lead designer behind Playdead’s Limbo and Inside, its reveal trailer in 2022 made splashes amongst followers of the video games Carlsen labored on. Throughout Summer time Video games Fest this yr, I lastly obtained to play roughly half-hour of this unusual, sci-fi puzzle recreation, and I don’t suppose it may have made a greater first hands-on impression.
Instantly, Cocoon’s visible model is putting. Its minimalist sci-fi aesthetic feels proper at house throughout the lineage of Playdead video games, though it’s vital to notice this comes from Carlsen’s new unbiased Geometric Interactive studio. I management a metallic beetle-like with no obvious goal: I attempt to discover the realm I’m in deeper as a result of that looks as if what I’m purported to do.
Shortly, although, I encounter puzzles constructed into the encircling alien atmosphere. In my favourite puzzle, I pull a geometrical, prismatic sphere throughout a half-circle line and doing so rotates a spire close by. On this spire are shapes, and I’ve to memorize the order during which these shapes seem after which stroll by means of symbols planted into the bottom close by based mostly on these shapes in that actual order. In one other, I look out to the horizon to find which shapes, during which order, I must work together with.
I would not name these puzzles difficult, however their serene and easy nature suits properly with the nippiness ambiance in the remainder of Cocoon. As peaceable and chill as Cocoon is, it’s additionally mysterious and considerably spooky, thanks partly to its wonderful sound design. Sci-fi womps, siren-like pops, and drawn-out notes create a rating that feels much less like a melody and extra like aliens talking by means of music.
For many of my half-hour, I used to be transporting massive, ethereal orbs from one place to a different, and every time I positioned this orb on the designated spot, one thing new occurred, permitting me to advance in my exploration. Walkways open up, horizontal platforms transfer left and proper, and elevators activate. Typically, the orb on my beetle’s again reveals pinkish-orange crystalline walkways beforehand hidden from sight, permitting me to achieve new areas. Different occasions, I full a puzzle and obtain a honeybee-like drone that follows me and shoots down obstacles in entrance of me, one other technique to achieve beforehand restricted areas.
The climax of the demo got here within the type of a boss battle. After diving into the orb I’ve been transporting on my again, I attain a brand new space (and I dive into different orbs, too, to achieve new areas elsewhere within the demo). After fixing a couple of puzzles, a large alien moth creature seems out of the bottom.
As a result of Cocoon would not have conventional fight, or at the very least this demo didn’t, my purpose is to outlive through the boss battle. The moth creature flies backwards and forwards throughout the sector, releasing a lethal stream of pinkish-orange crystal beneath that I’ve to dodge. It additionally shoots a stream of metallic bugs at me, which I rapidly shake off by urgent A. Sometimes, I see the dust beneath me shake, nearly as if one thing is crawling underground. Tapping A over this dust causes a purple and black bomb to look, and I can smash this bomb into the bottom to break the boss.
Defeating the boss paves the best way for me to achieve a brand new swamp space, however my demo ends shortly after my exploration right here started.
Cocoon is unusual and mysterious, and I’ve no clue what’s occurring narratively in its fiction. Its world, ambiance, visible model, rating, and resume of puzzles to this point are greater than sufficient to make sure I try the total recreation when it’s launched on Xbox Collection X/S, Xbox One, Swap, and PC someday this yr.
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