Cocoon asks you to carry the world on your shoulders, literally. Multiple, in 🍰fact, since its little insectoid protagonist has a habit of hauling entire celestial bodies on his back before he jumps into them again and again to solve puzzles and discover a universe that feels limitless in its🅘 potential. From the minds responsible for Limbo and Inside, Cocoon is a stunning game that manages to flex its extraordinary prowess at every turn. I’m still not sure how Geometric Interactive did it.
The hook of Cocoon is quite simple. After emerging from the titular carapace you are tasked with completing a handful of simplistic puzzles. Pull ropes to open a door, yank on a few levers here, and slowly learn that this alien world you’re thrust into is more alive than its abandoned state suggests. This alone would be a compelling foundation for an entire game, but Cocoon soon subverts your💎 expectations by presenting itself as something more. You are within a spherical world that ope🐬rates on its own terms, and very shortly you’ll hop out of it and into another. Before long, you’ll be hauling the world you started inside onto your shoulders, carrying it into another universe to conquer a puzzle that requires individual planets to communicate. It’s casually spellbinding in how it suddenly turns its solo landscape into a galaxy of infinite possibilities. It oozes a beautiful sense of cool.
Spider-Man 2 Isn't Too Short, It's Just Right
30 hours to platinum a game like Spider-Man 2 ﷺis nothing to sneeze at.
Learning that a riddle c𒊎an only be solved by hopping out of a planet, grabbing another, and then jumping several layers deep to place it upon a switch to reveal a once impossible solution nev🤪er gets old. At first, it’s complicated, but soon you will adjust to a new set of rules and strings of logic that welcome you with open arms.
You feel so small all the time, nothing more than an insect buzzing with morbid curiosity at alien habi💛tats you are suddenly entrusted with bringing back to life. It’s both tranquil and haunting, as if you’re disturbing an ancient order that wishes to remain untouched, but is desperate for some sort of changeও. Stories are told through actions and body language alone, a huge achievement for any medium. There are no humans, just insects, dust, and memories.
You can tell some of the folks behind Limbo and Inside are behind this game. It is similarly ingenious in its brilliance, introducing groundbreaking new puzzle mechanics at a constant pace like they’re going out of style. Coming to terms with the fact you can carry what seem like entire games on your shoulders becomes normal after a while, but by then Cocoon is framing them differently or forcing us to adjust our perspective in order to beat difficult bosses. Not once does it feel boring or predictable, using its alien visuals and smart mechanics to create a puzzle experie🐷nce that never falls victim to complacency.
People seem to be sleeping on this game, and I implore you not to. It’s on Game Pass if you don’t fancy coughing up a few pennies for it, and only takes a handful of hours to run through so won’t outstay its welcome. Cocoon is a smorgasbord of imaginative ideas, lush visuals, and a celestial atmosphere that haunts as much as it insp൲ires.
