Cocoon’s ingredients are quite clear: Jeppe Carlsen’s signature stripped back gameplay design mixed with retro sci-fi visuals of Moebius, Giger and the movie Fantastic Planet (1973), plus a lovely score in the style of Tangerine Dream. But what’s surprising is that it always feels totally alien to the player. In all its mystery, we ask: Who are we? Where are we? What year is this? What the fuck is going on? Was vanquishing that giant beast a good thing? Was I supposed to put this thing in that strange hole?

But unlike similar games such as Scorn, the puzzles manage to be greatly satisfying to solve and make sense logically, even if they don’t literally. Cocoon might well serve as key text in an essay about the psychology of puzzle solving, in that pleasure that comes from things being put in the right place, behaving in a way that they should. Before long, it just becomes second nature to put a whole planet inside a second planet so that the latter planet can use its unique physics to manifest an invisible bridge to carry the former planet across a vast metallic chasm, easy-peezy! And even as the puzzles become more complex, demanding somewhat paradoxical navigation between worlds and realities, the answer is often always in plain sight, moments away from that satisfying ‘click’ in the player’s head. As I said, it just makes sense.

The story, or lack thereof, gives the game a very casual feel. It’s hard to know if the stakes are high because we don’t know what they are; there’s room for interpretation, but Carlsen’s previous games Inside and Limbo present much clearer sense of danger and duality despite their minimal environmental storytelling. Cocoon is the leisurely pondering of an orb, finding order among chaos, if anything is even that chaotic to begin with.

Strongly recommended for fans of the last couple minutes of Men In Black.