Cocoon (2023)

It looks like this is the developers first game? Well Done!

The puzzles do get rather difficult. I would get stuck, refer to a guide, then give it a go on my own.

I'm surprised at how few have not completed it, at less than 10% upon my completion. It's worth the extra effort, especially to get what I would call a "low-hanging fruit" for a Platinum Trophy collection.

3.5/5

Coming from the lead game designer behind both Limbo and Inside, be prepared for some fantastic puzzles! I was never really sure what was going on with the story as you play as a little bug looking creature, and there are cosmic god like entities involved that you sometimes awake from their slumber and other times defeat as bosses. The game is pretty minimalist in execution, really only using a button or two apart from your directional movement.

The puzzles here are the real reason for playing this game and are fantastic. It starts off with some basic puzzle solving in the world, but quickly involves solving a puzzle in one world that will then affect how you solve the solution in another world. By the end it feels like you are nearly juggling puzzles and worlds just to find the proper solution. It can get a little frustrating at times as you really have to think outside the box, but it's well worth sticking with it!

From the first level warp, Cocoons presence is dignified and delicate in presentation.

A liminal adjacent world, evolved eons past its golden age. Only to now whisper mystery and greater knowledge for those who know how to look for it.

The less said, the more time to let its presence be, as if to not scare away a butterfly.

An axiom I greatly need in my approach to daily life.

Game #52/200

Cocoon is a puzzle game/spiritual successor to Limbo and Inside, two of the better puzzlers of the last 15 years, and games that I played close to their release and enjoyed. I am not the biggest puzzle player (the genre definitely has its moments), but I had a nice time with the aforementioned titles and my brother-in-law strongly recommended this one too, so for ~$14, I figured why not. The game plays quite differently than Inside or Limbo, which were 2D platformers, while Cocoon has an overhead view. The gimmick of the game is unique; you'll solve puzzles using orbs that have varied effects, but can also store other orbs inside of them, and whose "dimension" can be accessed from various pools, creating Russian doll-like multidimensional gameplay. There's definitely a better way of explaining that, but Cocoon offers an interesting and sometimes mindbending twist on the generic "puzzle-platform formula" of unlocking a new power, beating a series of puzzles with it, maybe fighting a boss, rinse and repeat. There are bosses in this title too, but I've gotta say, they are a LOT of fun and unforgivably challenging. I was getting my ass KICKED by a few bosses, and you'll have some really tense moments. You also only have a single HP before having to retry, which ups the ante. I thought the bosses had cool designs and patterns. The graphics, by the way, are quite nice. The desolate, alien-insect environments and insect-focused designs of the player avatar and other creatures are interesting and the overall graphics are smooth and colorful. It's not overly showy but looks nice. The sound effects are really crisp and caught my ear as well. As far as the puzzles themselves, they range from tough head scratchers to intuitively easy, but each is designed in such a way that you usually A. feel satisfied when you finally explore all of your options and figure it out and B. feel like the mechanics of the puzzle is unique and unlike anything you've seen before. For example, one of the powers is an orb that you can pick up from many different locations. There is a purple orb "flower" that may appear all throughout a puzzle. You'll need to consider other parts of the puzzle to decide which of the many derivative flowers to pick from and when/why. Overall, Cocoon is a really good ~5 hour puzzle title. It has a unique spatial/insectoid atmosphere with varied puzzle mechanics, outstanding puzzle design, some cool visual and audio flourishes, great boss fights, and a moderately high level of challenge.

Want fancy graphical options, billions of collectables, elaborate control schemes and a deep story line? Look elsewhere. Perhaps the most striking part of Cocoon is its intense focus. I don't think I've ever seen a game wring such complexity and originality out of one button and linear progression. While the overall gameplay isn't that different than what you've seen before in other puzzle games, Cocoon has a pretty cool take that involves a lot of recursion and an amazing aesthetic. The graphical fidelity may not be super deep but similar to what we've come to expect from Nintendo, the developers wring every last bit of style out of it in a breathtaking manner. One of the best puzzle games I've played in quite a while.

NOTE: I actually played this on PC Gamepass but for some reason Grouvee doesn't have an option for that release.

A beautiful little game that fed my love of puzzles. No dialogue. Not much of a storyline (which is totally okay with me for a game like this). Simple controls. And a REALLY beautiful experience that makes you think about how to solve puzzles using multiple "worlds."

Some of the puzzles throughout were fairly obvious how to solve and others - well, I would have to walk away for a few hours or sleep on it and pick it back up the next day with a fresh brain - which is the exact kind of challenge I love. I finished it without looking anything up or cheats.

If you love puzzles and serene, gorgeous environments combined with inventive thinking, this beauty is for you.

Cocoon is a wonderful adventure-puzzler where you play as an insect creature carrying and moving around orbs in order to proceed. These orbs have simple powers to them; for example, the red orb makes invisible platforms become walkable while you are carrying that orb. But the main twist is that these orbs also contain entire levels inside of them, meaning that you sometimes have to figure out how to arrange their positions inside of each other.

There's not a ton to say other than that I loved the gameplay and found it to be quite unique. It's not a very difficult game once you understand its mechanics, mainly because orbs can only be placed in specifically marked locations. There were times where I felt that I was going through the motions, solving very obvious puzzles. Thankfully, there were enough satisfying ones that I came out of the game feeling relatively pleased.

The experience has a great flow thanks to the variety of content. Not only does each world explore slightly different ideas, but there are also neat boss fights that help give you a small break from the puzzling. There are a few ideas that I felt were underexplored--in particular, there is a moment near the end of the game where you take an orb inside of itself, but I felt like they could have gone much further with that concept.

The graphics are fine, presenting a surreal combination of organic and mechanical worlds, but I didn't find anything about the presentation to be remarkable. The background music is used pretty intelligently to subtly push you forward whenever you've figured out a solution, but it's so ambient that nothing about it really stuck in my mind. There isn't much of a narrative here to draw you in, either. Cocoon is purely about the puzzling, for better or worse.

I think Cocoon is fun and unique, but not amazing. It does introduce plenty of interesting mechanics, but leaves me wanting for a slightly deeper exploration of them. That said, I was in the market for a brief little experience to play on the side, and it filled that role excellently.

On the subway I was thinking about the difference between Coocoon's puzzles, which I though were kind of meh, and The Talos Principle's, which I love.

One of the key aspects, I think, is that Cocoon puzzles are "digital", or "discrete". You can do just one thing in one place without any wiggle-room. For example, you can rest your balls only on the designated spaces.

In The Talos Principle puzzles are more "analogical". You can set boxes, crystals and other puzzle elements anywhere. And while all solutions are probably topologically equivalent, this gives the puzzles a greater sense of freedom and complexity because the relatively constrained list of interactions is not so obvious.

I liked this game a lot, but I didn't love it.

The graphics and style are as gorgeous as they are disgusting. Each world a slightly different take on techno-organic themes. I loved the design of the main character and the various obstacles and mechanics, which resonate with the main theme of each world.

The puzzles are fun, but not very deep or mind blowing. They were clever and entertaining, but for most of my playthrough I could instantly understand the solutions the moment I got to a new area. Honestly, during the first hour or so, I wasn't even sure this was even a puzzler, since most areas were solved naturally by putting mindlessly performing the only actions available. Only a few puzzles got me to that moment in which you've explored all the elements and have to stop and think of the non-obvious ways they might interact to find the solution. That was mostly in the latter third of the game, when puzzles featured multiple stacked mechanics and even a bit of recursion.

Unfortunately the game ends quickly after just two instances of recursion and just a few of those "aha" moments. So I don't think it fully explored the design space.

It's hard not to compare this to Patrick's Parabox, which is a superb puzzle game that plays with the idea of worlds within worlds. By eschewing the elaborate artsyle and sense of grandeur and instead hyperfocusing on the most minimalist implementation of each puzzle, that game achieves an extremely high concentration of satisfying "ahas" with minimal downtime.

Another annoyance that detracts from the puzzles are the bossfights, which felt out-of-place and badly implemented. These gimmicky fights are Mario-style "do the thing three times" and, while arguably puzzles, the fact that you can lose and have to start all over makes them repetitive and drag too long. If I already proved that I "solved the puzzle" by beating the first stage of the boss, then don't make me prove it again when I fail the second stage and have to start all over.

Cocoon is by no means a bad game. The beautiful visuals, lovely soundscapes and excellent level design makes it a great game. The puzzles are also not bad at all. But they are not mind-blowing besides a bit of recursion and interesting use of parity and they are diluted by the bossfights and other repetitive parts that don't flex the same muscles.

If I wanted a game that looked great and didn't have a run button, I'd just play the new Robocop game.

This is going to make me sound crazy and I get it, I look around and see everyone praise this and go "Is something wrong with my game? Did I miss a critical concept even having finished it? Am I stupid?" and while the answer to that last one may be a crucial "Yes!", I genuinely believe the Game Boy Color Zelda games have better puzzles, and certainly better bosses, than this.

Just play Moncage, Patrick's Parabox, and Baba Is You instead.

Hell dude, just play fckn Portal or a Metroid game.