I never gave this game much thought from the glimpses I've seen of it up to release, but the quadruple combo of it being a shorter game published by Annapurna that got high review scores and is day one on Game Pass made it very hard to ignore. I'm glad I didn't as I can confidently say that Cocoon is so far my favorite Indie game of 2023.

The game never tells you how to do anything, which is one of my favorite things about it. It just feels intuitive, and its solely up to you to figure things out. I got stumped a lot but outside of something I'll get to in a bit, it basically never felt like the game was unfair. And even when things seemed impossible, every single time I found out the solution I was impressed with how clever the game was. The puzzle design is just simply excellent here and it feels consistently rewarding.

Now there is a reason this game is missing a star. A few smaller issues first: I didn't really care about the art style. It feels a bit generic but its not a bad looking game either so not really a negative. The soundtrack also exists. Its fine I guess, but I never really noticed it which feels like a missed opportunity. Also if this game has a story, its very vague. I'm sure there's some deeper meaning to everything but it very much takes a backseat. These three things are fine and didn't really bother me as the gameplay is still very engaging but they do stop me from fully loving it.

Now about the actual things I dislike about the game. It took me around 5 and a half hours to beat. This is a great length for a game like this, and the puzzles continued to expand and stay interesting the whole time. That being said, there were several moments that felt like finales where the game just kept continuing on after. It led to a conflicting feeling where I was enjoying the puzzles but still wishing for the game to be over. It was just a bit exhausting to be thrown for a loop that much. The only other thing I dislike about this game are some of the timed puzzles. For the most part these are perfectly fine, but in the last fourth there is three different timed sections each made up of three different parts. They're sort of like a boss battle but if you fail any part you have to restart the whole section. While other bosses do make you restart, at least they were based on skill, but this one is solely on timing. This led to a lot of having to redo parts I already knew how to just to get back to the part I was actually stuck on and it was quite frankly a pain in the ass. I don't like timed puzzles and this was a bad way to implement them. Otherwise the bosses are all sort of similar but still unique enough that their presence makes the game more interesting.

Overall, Cocoon is a fantastic puzzle game that's held back only by a handful of small things and the very occasional annoying section. None of its negatives take away from the fact that its highly creative and one of the best games I've played in an already stacked year.

Thanks for reading if you made it this far <3

Nancymeter - 85/100
Achievement Completion - 80%
Time Played - 5 hours 43 minutes
Completion #29 of September
Completion #192 of 2023

You will be simping over the itsy bitsy protagonist at the beginning, and then, towards the end, you will find yourself tinkering over how to get out of the purple cocoon that has a portal to the green cocoon while carrying the green cocoon, which, by the way, happens to have green and orange cocoons inside of it, AND THAT ORANGE COCOON ALSO HAS GREEN COCOON INSIDE OF IT.

All in all, it's a brilliantly crafted indie game made by a handful of people who thanks to more people in their credits than the total number of people who worked on the game.
It lasts about 4 hours, but you can be sure that those hours will fly by. The graphics are simple but well-designed. Audio is very nice. Gameplay has a beautifully designed learning curve that suits my intelligence and gameplay style.
All very well but also, this game is not for everyone who HATES puzzles in games. If you are not one of them, give this game a chance, and if you don't experience brain freezes like I did, then you don't have to play this game on three different days and just finish it in a session.

Orbital Companion

The perfect game to play right before moving, this nonverbal rumbly treat is all about using unique orbs as portals to transport between spaces to unlock doors and find more orbs. Most of the game is spent doing albeit simple puzzles involving the diferrent colored orbs and the worlds they are attached to. For instance the first orb is orange which you use to activate switches and walk across invisible bridges. Much of the mid game is spent trying to juggle these various orbs and the portals you activate with them in order to make progress and while only a few moments will have you truly stuck, the moment of realization of what to do is always pleasing and satisfying.

The lead level designer behind Cocoon, Jeppe Carlsen, has also worked on Limbo and Inside. Two other nonverbal puzzling oddities, that focus on visual spendlor and the satisfaction of solving a puzzle towards the ominous unknown with far less focus on complexity. This makes sense because in some ways a difficult puzzle can actually halt the entire momentum of the aciton and the world. I would refer to most the puzzles in Cocoon more as 'fidget puzzles' than full fledged head scratchers, wherein a lot of it is backtracking for the item that you need. You play as this cute little bug creature so you can only carry one orb at a time and for whatever reason you're forced to place them down in specific sockets. Dont want to lose them by accident! So a lot of it ends up being pick up ball A move it to the new location, go back, and do the same with ball B. Again, this can be tedious but it's also meditative, helped by the soothing electric ambient score that unlike in other games in this genre (Gris etc) compliment the visuals rather than call out to themselves.

The real bite here is the visuals, unfortunately, the website I'm posting through doesnt have image/gif support, but it must be said how vitally well done this is. There is no other game where opening a door has felt this good. This is due in part to the immaculate sound design, the clinking and clattering of mechanical parts whirling help set the atmosphere and, while often mixed a little too loudly for my tastes, are almost always densely developed and done well. It's hard to talk about the visuals and my hesitations, I think that the plasticene world aesthetic looks nice, but is a bit too 'silicone valley sci fi' in its approach to the cleanliness of everything. For instance the staircases work in the context of the spidery bug world we are in, but you can see stairs that have a similar spindliness in a few gaudy megamansions from time to time. More importantly, the world of Cocoon lacks ecological 'dirt'. The world is in many ways too clean, theres no grime over anything so it ends up having the same textureless shine to the objects. On the other hand, monumental changes in environment or large objects look gorgeous.

I think the biggest problem with Cocoon is that there's no dash button. The way the game is set up, you have a radial walk and a single input button, sometimes you hold that input. The issue is, your bug buddy walks a bit on the slower side so you find yourself sauntering wishes you could make a rumble/dash happen. On the other hand maybe that would make the experience too fidgety, but since the puzzles lack difficulty or depth, it does end up being a lot of monotonous gliding from space to space. It can feel hollow sometimes but, in my case at least, this actually helped the experience. I am moving, and I couldn't help but think of how equally hollow preparing and carry stuff from one location to another is. I'm as meager as this bug is, and while my own 'orbs' are just as meaningful as its, there's this quiet solemness that this isn't quite fun or boring. You can't dash in real life either, transport and movement...it just has this quality of ennui and melancholy attached to it, and I think Cocoon is at its best when it does have this sense of monotony. You know how to solve the puzzle, you figured it out a minute ago but now you have to go through the portal animation and pick the orb up and go place it somewhere.

There are also, strangely enough, puzzle bosses! They are functional! Most of them focusing on positioning over anything else. If you get hit it just resets the fight, no harm done. Most of them are spectacle boss fights so you dont have to worry about getting skill tested. With that said, I do feel weird killing them! It gives me a very shadow of the collusus conundrum to be killing giant monsters in this barren wasteland for my own gain. This sort of reflects the ultimate shallowness of Cocoon wherein the focus is so spent on you feeling like you 'have something to do' that there's no taking anything in or just feeling out an ecological space. Like, I'm almost sad this is a puzzle game because this aesthetic would be amazing for a walking simulator and even teases at that idea towards the end. The world lacks life and you end up robbing it anyways for your opaque goals.

Due to the non verbalness and lack of dialogue plot, this goal stays opaque until the very end, but it just ends up giving the experience a sort of moral numbness. I don't feel like I was even supposed to think about the giant spider I killed so much as that I bested it and now I get the nice orb. Time is not even spent on dwelling on its death. If we flash back to Limbo...this is sort of a disappointment by comparison! In that game we had this big gnarly spider chase us down and slaughter us dozens of times, but then when we amputate and kill it, its not 'well done' its gorey and gross, you feel uncomfortable and even a little lost. By comparison Cocoon doesnt stray into this territory, but because of how cosmicly indulgent the world is, and how everything is a puzzle room, you end up just thinking about whats beyond what you're seeing in a remorseful 'I wish the game went there' sort of way.

It's weird though, I'm not sure I can reccomend whether other people would get anything out of it. It's one of those games that looks good and knows how to plot a beat and keep puzzle momentum, but at the same time its a whole game of just very beautiful busywork with little to offer underneath. I think maybe the best way to tell would be to consider how you feel about school animation short films. For instance MILK DUST is a visual treat focusing on a grand inspirational world, but the moment its over it sort of hums to the back of your mind, buzzing there only to be pulled out randomly as a humored annoyance or 'oh yeah I remember'. Much like moving itself, I think this business but shallowness when you're not is sort of core to the feeling of moving and transportation generally. Like as an experience, Cocoon handles the core aspects of moving, that being the transportational tedium, effectively. Contrast that with the approach of say Unpacking which focuses on organizational coping as a form of zen. That being said, I can only say this from the perspective of extreme bias. I think its neat enough to give a try if you're in the mood for a more light and breezy eye candy take on the mechanics found in Inside or if you liked the scale of the similarly non verbal Tunic or Hyper Light Drifter. Regardless of how much it appeals to you, I certainly wouldn't say its something you need to get to right away.

A smooth, polished object, to be expected from members behind Limbo & Inside. Much more of a pure puzzle game than cinematic platformer, it always feels expensive, atmospheric & opaque. Many puzzles come down to ‘place box in the right order’ & rely on your short term memory's ability to hold the layered levels in your mind (failing this, running back thru over and over, observing the puzzle layout).

The world full of biological machinery and an ambiguous alien industry recalls the stronger elements of Scorn (is this cosy scorn?) but I never felt the puzzles connected with the world in a meaningful way outside of the core ‘carrying around the level’ mechanic - which is always satisfying, but never too interesting. I do admire the inexplicable difficulty spikes (bullet-hell bosses?!) that do lend some much needed friction, but for a little guy with wings, the game is remarkably rigid, lacking the playful physics & movement of Playdead’s work.

For a game called Cocoon, a game that centers around worlds nestled within other worlds, you wouldnt expect such a safe and mostly superficial experience.

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Theres something about Cocoons defining mechanic that just naturally makes your head spin. Spaces nestled inside each other suggests a mind-bending continuity that is just hard to visualize without some thought. The idea itself gave me alot of hope, its one of those ambitious avant garde type ideas that modern puzzlers are tackling with gusto. You can just feel that its gonna go crazy places.

But the feeling I had for most of the runtime, was that the game was terrified of me getting confused.

A game composed of guard rails, not confident in its players intelligence nor in its ability to execute a design that pushes the boundaries in a way that could still guide players to interesting solutions. At every point, the path behind you closes and tightly curates your potential options to make sure you never have too many leads to follow. The game does this to such a degree that there were a couple puzzles I was able to guess the solution purely by deduction of what was available to me - solutions that might have, otherwise, might have been more impressive had I logicked them out by thinking about their properties.

Maybe this is a personal problem but I would think all great puzzle designers would hope to avoid having their puzzles solvable just by game literacy alone. In playing it so safe, the game robs the players of the magic of connecting dots in their heads.

And to make matters worse, Cocoons fear of complexity means it doesnt actually start exploring the boundaries of its core concept until the final quarter of the game. The greater portion of the game is like a long tutorial, introducing you to some fundamentals thatll be important later mixed in with entirely ancillary gameplay systems that steal valuable space from the much more interesting dimensions the game could be exploring (quite literally in some cases). Im happy to report that the game does get to some interesting places but right as it starts to get good, the game ends. What Im left feeling is that I just played a very elaborate and polished prototype or prologue to the real game that we didnt get with Cocoon.

If that wasnt disappointing enough, the story implications are incredibly…. minor. Exceedingly creative and beautiful worlds designed and built for such an inconsequential experience, what am I supposed to be left with? I cant help but feel all I played was a video game for video games sake. If theyre not pushing the envelope on gameplay and theyre not pulling me in with the magic of intrigue, where the hell is the effort going?

Cocoon is merely a fine game to me. Well made, well functioning, but just not remarkable in all the ways that should matter.

And thats extremely disappointing, cuz Cocoon had every opportunity to be truly incredible.

Such a pretty game and overall smooth experience with some very fulfilling puzzles that made me say "oh my god" a fair amount of times. I wasn't following whatever artsy story they were trying to tell until the very end where it kinda clicked and eh fair enough it was somewhat interesting. This game really shines in how each puzzle "solution (idea, concept etc.)" is never overdone or overstayed it's welcome, and they're introduced at a very steady rate. But a couple did leave me wanting just a bit more (one in particular really makes me want a a sequel just for that). I've played a fair amount of puzzle games and this one feels like it respects your intelligence particularly well. Also the "bosses" were a nice addition to shake up the gameplay.

It's quite beautiful to make a game with this much interactivity with a singular button. Puzzles feel good, look good, and are very digestible without being solved at first glance. I feel like puzzle games kinda struggle with a good balance between rocket surgery and square block goes into square hole, but this strikes it nicely.

I'm kinda missing a point to it all? It's like this was a project to explore interactivity, which I guess is fine on its own, but it's just a bit wasted potential to be this immersed and only end up thinking about button presses. Kinda feels like I just had sex for 6 hours without cumming? Like it's nice and all, but.. I like cumming

Tinha tudo pra ser confuso, mas o level design é tão bom que é difícil se perder.

Até agora é meu melhor do ano (2023, não tô com grana pra jogar os lançamentos gigantes).

Um puzzle game complexo há um primeiro olhar mas é muito bem guiado e linear. Direção de arte completamente alienígena!!

Cocoon operates with two opposite paradigms at the same time. Aesthetically, it is one of the most deliberately alien experiences in recent memory, stripped almost entirely from the usual layers of anthropomorphism that structure the vast majority of video games. While there may be parts of Cocoon’s worlds that were inspired by earthly shapes and figures, their assemblage escapes every attempt of categorization. You’ll traverse natural landscapes like desolated canyons or boundless swamps that are honeycombed by artificial geometric forms. Futuristic artifacts are scattered across these wastelands like remnants of long-lost civilizations, without showing any signs of decay. Instead, the most advanced technologies are often seamlessly integrated into their surroundings, appearing as nothing more than a natural expansion of the domestic life-forms. Most of the alien creatures seem to be modeled after various types of insects, albeit with fluid boundaries to synthetic life on one side and inorganic matter on the other. No words are spoken throughout the entire game to try to explain those beings, though I doubt that the categories familiar to our language would be sufficient to adequately describe them.

To give just one example: There are these tiny, pyramid-shaped flying things that temporarily accompany you throughout the game and are used to open certain barriers, thus resembling a sort of remote control. But the same robotic assistants are created out of some amorphic floating liquid that shapes into an amber-like crystal before being shattered to give “birth” to them like a fossilized insect. And at some point, other floating things appear that can trap your little companions with a sticky substance, as if they are carnivorous plants that act as natural enemies, even though they can themselves be remotely controlled on predetermined paths by the player character. Cocoon constantly undermines any effort to adequately organize its sights and sounds, most notably with its central feature of traveling between worlds within worlds, a mechanic that literally forces you to inverse your previous sense of proportions and causation on a routine basis.

Mechanically, however, Cocoon is translucently unambiguous. As confusing as the jump into and out of the different worlds may be visually, it rarely leaves you stranded about what to do next. Progression is completely linear, with only the occasional branching path that leads to a dead end after a few steps. Every new problem is presented in a way that makes it immediately obvious what you need to achieve, just as all the tools and obstacles on your way are distinctly highlighted. Consider again your little pyramid-shaped companions. A beam of light shines from the tip of the pyramid which automatically points you to your next objective. Once they reach their corresponding obstacle, a little animation is triggered which makes the obstacle glow as well before it starts moving. The same beam starts to flicker when they get close to their enemy. Finally, they disappear again as soon as their purpose is fulfilled. Although it is never explained what this thing is or why it works the way it does, the question how it works never really arises.

The same is true for every single element in the game: Buttons open doors or move platforms, pressure plates need a weight on them to stay activated, pipes are used to transport orbs etc. And since there is only one action button, you are never in doubt about how to interact with the various objects as well. Even the bosses reliably follow a pre-established rulebook. Every boss first introduces itself in a scripted sequence, before challenging you at the end of its respective segment where it takes every precaution to telegraph its attacks and reveal its weak spot as clearly as possible during the fight. I never got hit on my first try in any of these encounters, which pretty much never happened to me before. In short, you have any prior experience with puzzles from other games, there are almost no surprises here. The game isn’t even all that difficult. Puzzles might technically get very complex and abstract towards the end, but they are always structured in a way that splits the challenges up into multiple smaller segments with only a handful of variables to work with. For most of the playtime, the solution presents itself almost as naturally as all the other elements.

By all accounts, these two contradictory approaches to aesthetics and gameplay should all but negate each other. Instead, the unique quality of Cocoon arises from the tension between them. It captures an experience of immense uncertainty about the fundamental conditions of the world – what things are and why they exist –, but at the same time gives you an almost instinctive understanding of how to work with them. Crucially, most puzzles play out less stimulating than arduous. This is by no means meant as a criticism. It simply describes the basic condition of the character, who is constantly working by carrying around these orbs more than twice their size on their back, taking part in a process where the next step is always logical enough to take it almost automatically, while both the originating cause and ultimate goal of your actions are infinitely removed from your grasp – along with all the curiosity and excitement as well as uneasiness and distress this process implies. The only thing that was somewhat clear to me throughout the adventure was that my actions were somehow driving forward some kind of evolutionary process. But whose evolution I was contributing to or to what ends is left almost completely open to speculation. Your role is just to bear witness to a gradual accumulation of energy and power, which progressively involves everything from the tiniest insects to the most elemental forces of the universe.

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Cocoon is a delight. A strange world all based around that joke at the end of Men in Black (1997) where you find out our whole galaxy exists in a game of marbles some alien dude is playing.

This game only really has about 5 levels, but the trick is that all 5 levels coexist and you're constantly traveling between them at a moment's notice. It's a marvel and a technical mystery. I love all the weird designs of the creatures and environments. feels kinda Cronenberg-y sometimes. I hope we get the sequel it kinda teased, cuz this was a really great and I want more.

Not yet a butterfly.

A while back, I wrote a review for Resident Evil 2’s remake, and I gave it five stars. Part of the justification I gave at the time was that I couldn’t think of “anything that I disliked about it”, and I’m beginning to suspect that may have been the wrong way of looking at it. Not only does it frame the praise in a pretty backhanded way, but it’s not wholly accurate to why it got the score that it did, either. To be fair to myself, I knew at the time that it was an oversimplification that I wrote down purely for the sake of having something snappy to say about the game, but it’s games like Cocoon that make me rethink taking that position. Like Resident Evil 2, I can’t think of anything I disliked about Cocoon. Why, then, does the former get five stars, and the latter get three?

Unrealized potential.

There are a lot of pieces of art and a lot of places and a lot of people out there in the world which aren’t unlikable, but they aren’t especially likeable, either. It’s not enough to not have anything that’s unlikable about you. You need to have something more that draws people in and keeps them there. For some, I imagine the art direction of Cocoon alone is going to be enough to fill in the gaps of the weak puzzle design and a premature ending — it almost was, for me — and that’s good. But I’m left wanting for more in a way that didn’t satisfy me, because Cocoon's got a lot of promise that it can't quite deliver on.

The core gimmick of hopping between universes has been done dozens of times before, but Cocoon stands out in how seamless the transitions are. There’s a very, very lengthy pre-load when you first boot the game up as it assembles all of the assets, and this allows you to completely avoid loading screens; whatever loading is going on after you start the game is completely unnoticeable, which is a definite achievement for something that looks this visually impressive. The game has an immensely strong identity, with all of its insect-like machines and swelling synth arpeggios; equally impressive is the paring down of the control scheme to a single analog stick and one button. You would expect your verbs to be fairly limited when you've only got a single button for interacting with the world, but it allows you to carry orbs, drag objects, run through motion sensors, activate platforms, teleport to different worlds, control grub-like drones, and shoot energy blasts. There are a lot of moving parts to keep track of, and that suggests there's going to be some very in-depth puzzle design.

What’s unfortunate, then, is how all of these actions being contextual means that you’ll very rarely be using them in tandem with one another to solve problems. Most of the puzzles are little more than identifying which orb you need to be carrying at a given time, carrying that orb until the puzzle is solved, and then swapping out for a different orb as needed until you can progress to the next area. The dimension-hopping aspect itself actually ends up taking something of a backseat as you move further and further through the game; progressing through each of the orb’s sub-worlds will eventually place you in a spot that you can’t get out of, locking you to a single screen within that orb. The red orb that you start the game with, for example, will leave you stuck in about thirty square feet of space you can walk around in for the last hour of the game, meaning that it devolves into only being usable as a sort of backpack to store other orbs inside of. The white orb’s world similarly gets pared down to purely being a place to store the red orb inside of, and the purple orb’s world might actually just be one or two screens. Even the final puzzle of the game that requires you to nest all of the orbs inside one another in a specific order is painfully easy due to how linear of a solution it is, reflecting a lot of the other puzzles in the game; the hardest part of most of these is when you know what you need to do, but it’ll take you a couple minutes to walk around setting it all up.

I've struggled with the rest of this review because I walked away from writing for a few days, and now that I'm back at it, I barely remember anything about Cocoon. There are these vague vignette flashes, where I can recall a setpiece or two — the tennis match against the big orb guardian, the drone puzzles — but the rest of these color-coded worlds bleed into one another as a brown-grey muck. What I definitely didn't expect out of Cocoon was for as much of it to be as forgettable as it ultimately feels, but I doubt I'll be able to recall much of anything about it by this time next week. With the puzzles being as linear as they are, the game relies heavily on being a sightseeing tour, and it feels sort of like I drove straight through it. It's the type of game that I want to like a lot more than I actually do. What's here could have been a lot more impressive than it is, but it isn't, and that makes it hurt worse than if it had no potential at all.

You can't only do nothing wrong.

There's a certain joy in not knowing. In avoiding trailers and hype, screenshots and terminally online discussion. You find certain sources - people, publishers, developers - that you trust, and then you simply experience their output and recommendations. No teaser needed, no hook to draw you in. They've earned the blind leap.

Which is how I came to Cocoon. Didn't know the genre, hadn't seen a single screen. Downloaded it, booted it up. Little beetle man, running around. Fairly standard lug and tug puzzles and then: the leap. Upwards and outwards into the understanding that the little world you were in is just that: a little world, subject to the same lug and tug rules. Instantly smitten, excited, thinking about all the ways things could unfold.

It certainly doesn't hurt that the game is wonderfully tactile, enigmatic and alive and alien. The soundscape resonates perfectly. Little musical swells let you know when you're walking into the solution of a puzzle, insectile feet clink and clank pleasantly. Lovely stuff.

The puzzles? Sadly, still those standard lug and tugs, with the occasional nod to the in-and-out world hopping. You collect more orbs - worlds - with different abilities. You apply them in safe, softlock-proof puzzles, each discrete enough that you run no risk of them ever overlapping. A little poking and prodding is all you ever need to get through, even in the eleventh hour when the game starts to twist its core mechanic inward on itself.

And that's the problem, really. Cocoon is clever but safe, polished to a mirror sheen. You gloss and glide over it, meeting little resistance until you find the end. It's fun, it's gorgeous to look at and listen to, but it's playtested and designed into pursued perfection, afraid to challenge the player in any meaningful way. Which is fine. It is what it wants to be, and time spent with it is hardly wasted. Nonetheless, it could have been more. As it stands, it promises the stars but delivers the moon.

Cocoon is a game I really looked forward to playing, but fell a bit short of my expectations. On one hand it is very clearly a graphically and artistically beautiful game. The environments are gorgeous and extremely varied. I particularly liked the almost H.R. Giger-esque blends of biology and technology. The worlds felt like they had an extremely long history and the technology you interact with reminded me of Arthur C. Clarke’s adage “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” Early in the game you reach a point where you can enter and exit a little pocket dimension and the visual and audible transition between dimensions is extremely satisfying. You see it a lot since it’s a core gameplay mechanic so I’m glad they got it right. The sound design was very subtle, but very effective. The pitter patter of your little bug feat through rough sand, across metal platforms, and puddles behind an ominous otherworldly melodic hum made the world feel very dreamlike. The buttons, platforms and other pieces of technology through the game all sounded very advanced and alien.

The game is very deep on a conceptual level and you can tell that through the puzzles it throws at you. I was convinced a handful of times that I’d broken the game and didn’t have all the pieces I needed to progress only for that “aha!” moment to strike and humble me. The game is extremely fair and thoughtful of your time. You are given the puzzle pieces you need in front of you and the rest of the environment is locked off to prevent backtracking too far and becoming overwhelmed by a large explorable space. One of the most amazing parts is it gives you these puzzle pieces and new gameplay elements without any text or dialogue through the entirety of the game. The visual language of the world is so strong and easy to read and it was never a question of what I could interact with, but more what order I needed to interact with it in order to progress.

There are no traditional enemies throughout the environment, nor is there any type of ‘fail state’. You can’t fall off platforms to your death or be killed by the environment in any way. This is where one of my primary complaints comes from. I never felt a sense of urgency or pressure from the game to do anything. I knew I was safe at all times which seems counterintuitive to finding yourself in such an alien world. There are a handful of boss battles which have “death states”, but even then there’s little consequence to “dying.” I use quotations because even in these scenarios you aren’t killed in battle, the boss generally boots you out of the arena to right outside the entrance where you can just try again. Though the boss battles were each extremely unique and all introduced interesting gameplay mechanics. I liken them to 2D Zelda bosses in difficulty and gameplay.

Where I think the game falters primarily is the emotional impact it has. For me, I felt basically nothing while playing it. I enjoyed the puzzles and boss battles as a game, but seeing as this game has absolutely zero dialogue, story set up, or indication of what your end goal actually is, I just could not get emotionally invested. There is obviously some deep history and lore in this world, but you don’t interact with any living creature that tells tales of what used to be or remembers “a time before.” There are no stakes in saving anyone or anything because you are the only living thing that isn’t a god like creature. There is only you, the lowly worker and the bosses, particularly the final boss, who are clearly higher beings than you. I don’t make this comparison just because both games feature bug-like creatures, but there are a lot of similarities to Hollow Knight. You are mysteriously thrust into a decaying foreign world with a clear long lost history. In Hollow Knight you come across small pockets of society, or lone survivors who remember the kingdom before it fell which really feeds you empathetic drive to fix that world.

All in all, I think the art, sound and gameplay are top notch, possibly among my favorite indie games. However, I wish there was more meat on the bone lore wise to dig into and to get me more emotionally involved in the what or why I was navigating this world. I spent maybe 5-6 hours and managed to unlock all achievements using the level select to pick up missed collectables after completing the story. If you have access to this game on Xbox Gamepass, it's a no brainer. Though replayability is probably pretty limited since the pathway is so linear and puzzles only have one solution.

The two previous works from Jeppe Carlsen—Limbo and Inside— are about humans. Two kids to be exact. They infiltrate a facility of some sorts to find something, they see very fucked up stuff, they die a lot in gruesome ways. There is something to get attached to there: you see a human and you see them die and go "fuck, that's brutal." At the end, after everything they went through, you think "it must have been for something" and start to imagine things in your head. You begin to make theories. I have my own about both games. The issue with those games for me, however, was that theories would always get cut short. Because everything in there is about humans, things are human-made, things are within the sphere of human understanding.

Cocoon is a game about fucko aliens watching other fucko aliens, beating up fucko aliens, turning into even more fucked up fucko aliens. There is almost nothing human to attach to. There's little guys that follow you around or these big bosses, but these shapes, movements, creatures, they're not anything I can point my finger towards to and go "ah, that came from this." Sometimes it has spider legs, but then it is stuck inside some weirdo crystal and makes brain mass pulsate on the floor. Sometimes it has tentacles but then it's also kind of a plant of some sorts? I just can't really explain anything.

All that's sort of human is that there are answers to the puzzles. Everything is designed, but none of it really operates logically. Things inside things, thing inside itself, things moving between different worlds or realities in ways they seemingly shouldn't. Things materialize and dematerialize, and there is consistency to everything. There is some plan. This game has an ending, your character has an end-goal. Maybe logic is not human after all. The universe existed before us, and it worked in its own way. Maybe logic is inherent. So is there anything human here?

It is on the player to insert that humanity into this game somehow. Thinking about this game as I played it, I have not really encountered a stopping point yet the same way there is with Limbo (the girl must mean something to the main character) or Inside (the creature you become at the end must mean something to the scientists and this facility, as well as the whole meta-narrative), though maybe I will, given that the game does have an ending. But not for now.

There is some form of infinity to this game's alien presentation. The little sound effects of the metal wings or the cybernetics of the robobuds make things feel tactile, familiar, but its constant reliance on the unfamiliar and that cool as fuck ending make it feel infinite in scale. It feels like I can reach into this game and it will keep on giving for a long time. Time will tell, but this is a far more interesting feeling, far more special feeling than anything these types of games have ever given me before. An interaction between the player and the game that doesn't feel gamey. Something truly special.

Inside is one of my favorite games of all time, because of how intense its atmosphere is and how well it conveys feelings without a single word uttered throughout its playtime. Of course I was expecting Cocoon to be a good game and it surely was. It's probably one of the most intricately and beautifully designed puzzle games of recent years and I really love how it made me feel smart, instead of feeling stupid, like so many other puzzle games usually make me feel. What I really missed here is a similar dark and gritty atmosphere and the art style, while of course being presented in great fashion, wasn't really my jam. Big recommendation still.

O melhor: Os visuais
O pior: Os puzzles em sua maioria são mais trabalhosos do que desafiadores e interessantes
Não confundir com: Cocoon, filme de 1985 do mesmo diretor de "O Grinch"

Cocoon é um jogo de puzzle feito por um designer ex-Playdead (Limbo e Inside), onde você controla um "homem-inseto" num mundo alienígena em busca de... algo. Como os jogos citados anteriormente, não há nenhum tipo de diálogo ou explicação sobre onde exatamente você está ou o que exatamente está acontecendo. Mas, diferente dos jogos da Playdead, Cocoon apresenta uma estética bem colorida, com alguns visuais que gerariam um belo papel de parede para o seu desktop. Ele é carregado do começo ao fim por essa estética e pelos seus puzzles, com alguns momentos de ação entre cada capítulo.

A mecânica principal envolve a manipulação de esferas, sendo que cada uma dessas esferas carrega um mundo dentro de si. Um conceito de ficção científica já apresentado em obras como MIB ou Rick and Morty, e que é muito bem utilizado nesse jogo. Cada capítulo consiste em explorar o mundo dentro de uma esfera, navegando e resolvendo os puzzles nele até uma Boss Battle. Após vencer o chefe, você pode utilizar a esfera para alguma habilidade específica que permite acesso a novas localidades no mundo e, claro, novas esferas. Eventualmente você estará manipulando várias esferas e entrando e saindo de diferentes mundos, o que pode intimidar um pouco, mas o fato é que os puzzles de Cocoon são, em sua maioria, bem simples.

Essa simplicidade e linearidade acabam tornando Cocoon um jogo menos interessante do que ele poderia ser. Se a solução de um puzzle não é imediatamente óbvia, é muito provável que a primeira coisa que o jogador tentar fazer já vai resolver o cenário. Até porque, por quase todo o jogo, não há muitas possibilidades de experimentação em busca de uma solução para um puzzle. Isso, por si só, não é exatamente algo ruim. O problema é que, por alguns momentos, talvez em uma tentativa de adicionar alguma complexidade, os puzzles podem se resumir num ir e voltar pelos mesmos cenários só para ativar os dispositivos necessários para prosseguir. Isso torna vários puzzles apenas trabalhosos e monótonos, e a maior parte deles eu avancei sem pensar muito no que estava fazendo. Não há estado de falha em Cocoon, então dificilmente o jogador irá "empacar" em alguma parte, mesmo nas batalhas contra chefes, interessantes visualmente mas também bastante simples.

Cocoon é curto, bonito e conceitualmente interessante, e está disponível no Game Pass, o que torna ele até fácil de se recomendar. Mas não achei que ele é particularmente memorável ou que é bem sucedido em utilizar suas mecânicas além do básico, o que é uma pena.

"Nature uses only the longest threads to weave her patterns, so that each small piece of her fabric reveals the organization of the entire tapestry."

- Richard Feynman

Despite being a puzzle game, Cocoon seamlessly fits into the realm of sensory exploration experiences, akin to titles like Journey and Sable. As you calmly navigate this world devoid of the fear of death, a dynamic, meditative soundtrack accompanies you, perfectly synchronizing with the textures of your surroundings.

Although a mind-bending, reality-distorting puzzle game, Cocoon is surprisingly frictionless and frustration-free. Most puzzles are solvable relatively quickly, contributing to a smooth and enjoyable gaming experience. However, this ease doesn't detract from the overall quality of the experience. Cocoon's puzzles are well-designed, and the intricate connections between them are impressive and, at times, even staggering.

Video games can often be seen as a language unto themselves. As players navigate the expansive and dynamic gaming landscape, they find a shared lexicon that extends beyond a particular game's specific narrative or aesthetic. Whether one is mastering the art of precision platforming, honing strategic decision-making in a real-time strategy game, or perfecting movement and aim in a first-person shooter, the fundamental principles of play often carry over.

Cocoon is able to gamify this phenomenon by teaching players its language—one they will need to navigate its world and solve its puzzles—all without saying a word.

Ultimately, the game strikes an effective balance between being an easygoing adventure and a showcase of intricate puzzle design.

It's got some killer boss fights, too, if you're into that sort of thing.

Desafiador sem ser confuso.

Quando você pensa que chegou em um puzzle altamente complexo, é só esperar 1 minuto e perceber que a solução é tão simples como você nem imaginava.

São nessas obras que a simplicidade se mostra ser aliada de boas experiências.

In puzzle games there's a distinction between games that give you all the tools needed and let you figure it out the answer, and games that hide things from you and make your brain go nuts for hours and hours, i like to compare that to "jigsaw puzzles", the first one, and "brainteasers" the second one. I myself am much more a fan of the first one, and Cocoon is for sure one of the best of this kind out there.

Cocoon is never too much, it's never too little, it always tell the players all the clues it needs while never letting too many things overload your brain by closing the finished paths behind you.

It teach's its verbs one by one, and use each one of the them to the maximum, and that goes to your basic puzzle piece to this game amazing world structure (not getting into it because spoilers). Every puzzle ahead is a matter of "what verbs do i have and what possibilities there are". To summarize this, the very last puzzle it's a lecture on this mentality, i had only one verb and from that i was able to logically codify the other ones in one go.

It's safe to say that Cocoon it's a must for puzzle fans, and i couldn't have had a better time with it

A Coc 'n' Ball story

A neat little puzzle game with a great atmosphere and some really interesting ideas thanks to its ball-hopping, world jumping puzzles. I actually think its really well designed for newcomers to the genre, or those who are more familiar with the puzzle design of 2D platformers (which the game's director was responsible for with Limbo and Inside). It was a shame for me that these ideas weren't explored much further than surface level as there seemed to be so much promise for the kinds of puzzle possible, but it's hard to be too critical in that regard as it's not something the game ever really sets out to do.

I was probably more disappointed that Cocoon lacks much of a narrative hook - as mentioned the atmosphere is great but I was really playing more for the puzzles than any kind of world building which felt a bit perfunctory at times.

Cocoon tem cenários incríveis em questão de arte, mas sua linearidade frequentemente torna os puzzles ridiculamente fáceis, eu sou um total zero a esquerda quando o assunto são jogos focados em puzzles, mas nesse a esmagadora maioria é resolvido só de bater o olho, isso se dá devido as mecânicas serem extremamente simples e honestamente, não muito desenvolvidas ao decorrer do jogo. As Boss Fights são igualmente fáceis infelizmente, eu não contei tantas durante o jogo, mas a maioria eu me esqueci logo após devido a falta de complexidade em como derrotar cada um dos bosses. Por último, quero mencionar como a trilha sonora é fantástica e combina perfeitamente com o estilo de arte "bio-mecânico" que o jogo aborda em alguns momentos e com seus cenários naturais.

Em conclusão, é um jogo perfeito em questões técnicas como visual e música, mas terrivelmente simples em sua gameplay, o que pode agradar algumas pessoas, mas no meu caso só me deixou frustrado, em nenhum momento eu quis continuar Cocoon, eu tenho a impressão de que o jogo só ficou realmente interessante quando estava perto do fim, e seus puzzles começaram a ficar mais variados e me fizeram pensar mais. Cocoon certamente tem conceitos de gameplay interessantes, mas pareceu mais interessado em mostrar seu mundo do que explorar esses conceitos.