Cocoon: The Return
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Sep 28, 2023 · Sep 28, 2023. Cocoon Video Review. Cocoon reviewed by Hana Kim on PC. Also available on Xbox, PlayStation, and Nintendo Switch. Cocoon is a breathtaking puzzle-platformer that borders on...
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By Hana Kim
Posted: Sep 28, 2023 4:00 pm
Without a single word, Cocoon takes a small, cicada-like creature on an exciting journey through the cosmos using only a thumbstick and a single button. That setup should sound exceedingly familiar for fans of gameplay designer Jeppe Carlsen's previous work, Limbo and Inside. But here, Cocoon differentiates itself from those monumentally creepy side-scrolling adventures as a 3D puzzle-platformer, and the additional dimension provides a refreshing amount of, well, depth to its challenging and intriguing puzzles. These puzzles build on each other in smart ways, keeping fundamental mechanics from the desert at the very start integrated and important all the way to the end. And even as Cocoon gets more and more complex, its minimalist controls make sure it never feels overwhelming.
It’s not long before your cicada is unexpectedly whisked out of that barren starting area and into a harsh mechanical one, and it’s there you find your first orb – a mysterious orange sphere that somehow contains that entire previous desert world inside of it.
You can pick this world up and carry it around, using it to power platforms, lifts, and other machines that impede your progress. Solving these puzzles as you swap between worlds is a wonderful time; seeing how each piece of the puzzle interacts with others and figuring out the layers between them is some of the most mesmerizing and engaging stuff I've seen in a while.
Solving these puzzles as you swap between worlds is a wonderful time.
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A subtle bit of encouragement comes in the form of musical cues and triumphant swells that occur as you get closer and closer to the solution, cheering you on the whole time and adding to the feeling of discovery and accomplishment you feel once you finally crack the puzzle.
It's a strange feeling, but rewarding nonetheless.
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Right before the repetition and feeling of walking the same paths back and forth starts to wear thin, Cocoon loops around from the verge of frustration to an almost Zen-like experience. You’re introduced to new and exciting concepts that eventually become natural and easy; what was once an entire solution is now barely even a piece of a much larger puzzle. The absence of any overt guidance as I made my way through this wordless story made it feel like the cicada is being compelled by some force, natural or otherwise, to complete its task.
Later puzzles add layers to the complexity and the need to basically open your third eye to solve them. It’s not unlike the feeling of getting the hang of Portal, where suddenly there’s an entirely new way of thinking about what’s possible in a space. Once you start bouncing between each world, bringing one orb into another and using its abilities to trigger something you couldn't before, everything really starts to click; the depth of what's going on here is easy to miss, thanks to the simplified control scheme and deceptively uncomplicated art style, but the way you can seamlessly hop in and out of different worlds – and even place a world within a world in order to solve certain puzzles – is really something to behold.
Despite that layered and compounding challenge, Cocoon doesn't last very long at all – my first playthrough took a crisp five and a half hours, though it also contains plenty of replay value in finding the hidden Moon Ancestor collectibles tucked away in each world. Each of these collectibles are incredibly well hidden, but the feeling of intrigue I got while finding them (and the achievements you get for them) compelled me to find more whenever I could. Even though I wasn't able to find them all, the feeling of the few that I did find blew me away; I'll definitely be coming back to find the rest.
Cocoon is a breathtaking puzzle-platformer that borders on psychedelic. Building on what made Inside designer Jeppe Carlsen's previous work stand out, Cocoon not only presents a mind-bending journey through the cosmos via fascinating worlds-within-worlds puzzle mechanics that beg you to delve another layer deeper, but an interesting take on the rep...
- Hana Kim
Sep 29, 2023 · Watch the launch trailer for Cocoon for another look at this sci-fi adventure game. In Cocoon, entire worlds exist within orbs small enough to carry on your back. Figure out how to use these...
Reception. Awards. References. External links. Cocoon (video game) Cocoon is a 2023 puzzle adventure game developed by Geometric Interactive and published by Annapurna Interactive. The player controls a beetle that can hop between worlds, solving puzzles to unravel the universe's mysteries.
