Astro Bot is not just for kids. Team Asobi has clearly designed it for players of all skill levels, and that includes kids and beginners, but at its core Astro Bot feels like it was made specifically for video game fans. It’s a skill-focused celebration of everything that makes the format so memorable and fun, while also being an excellent introduction to the language of games. With precise and responsive controls, charming characters, and an exciting variety of mechanics and environments. Astro Bot is undoubtedly one of the best games Sony has ever produced.
Astro Bot is technically the fifth entry in the Astro universe, although it is the first full-fledged – and full-priced – installment in the series. It follows The playroom (a mini-game collection for PS4 from 2013), The Playroom VR (a PlayStation VR jam from 2016), Astro Bot Rescue Mission (a PS VR platform game from 2018 in which only the bots play the main role) and Astro’s Playroom (a DualSense demo from 2020 that comes pre-installed on every PS5). Astro Bot takes ideas from those earlier titles and distills them into a focused 3D platformer with dozens of main worlds, a bevy of additional unlockable planets, and a wide range of satisfying mechanics. On top of that, the robot protagonists are super cute in every situation. The fact that some of the characters and locations in Astro Bot from well-known video games, just makes the whole thing sweeter.
Players are on a mission to rescue all 300 of their robot friends after an alien intercepts their spaceship, a supercharged PS5, and scatters the crew across six dangerous galaxies. Sitting on a lone DualSense, Astro searches a total of 50 planets, collecting other bots by punching them – you know, in a friendly way – and then storing them in the on-screen controller’s touchpad before dropping everyone off on a safe world. At the same time, Astro searches for the missing pieces of the PS5 spaceship, which are guarded by bosses in each galaxy.
The hub world, where the ship and rescued bots live, features customization portals for the DualSense and Astro, a Gatcha machine with items that bring your bots to life, and a Safari Zone where you can take photos with animals you find. There are also small regions where you can provide Astro and his friends with additional puzzles. Outside of the hub planet, the basic loop of the game involves collecting coins, puzzle pieces, and bots by completing platforming challenges and surviving Koopa-like enemies, but new dangers and even trickier environments appear around every corner.
Many of the planets Astro lands on introduce new mechanics, such as spring-loaded boxing gloves that look like frog faces, an octopus that inflates Astro like a balloon, a mouse backpack that lets him shrink at will, a penguin-powered swimming booster, and a stopwatch that stops time for a short period of time. The levels are built around these unique mechanics, and the variety of elements on display is impressive, from a spooky castle filled with toxic-green ghosts and invisible platforms to a deconstructed space station in a deliciously cosmic setting and an entire planet built from giant, neon-lit casino props.
Even before he picks up any cool new toys, Astro has a laser-guided hover ability that lets him destroy enemies while he jumps over them, as well as a standard punch and a chargeable spin move. These three abilities and the tool he picks up make up Astro’s entire arsenal. This mechanical focus allowed Team Asobi to perfect each move and then apply them all in a thousand different ways, and the result is a rewarding and robust platformer. All the cuteness is just an added bonus.
Astro Bot is not punishing, but not easy either. Many levels require patience, attention and a high level of platforming skills, although resets are generous and failure costs nothing but your time. Completionists will have a lot of fun here – there are so many Finding secret passages and hidden bots, most of them cleverly hidden and easy to miss if you are not actively looking for them. On the other hand, speedrunners should enjoy Astro Bot and that’s because it features planets full of platforming challenges with incredibly responsive controls.
There are 300 bots to find, and many of them come from the wide world of gaming. Many of the branded bots are not from Sony’s stable, and the big names from Capcom and Sega are well represented too – some of them definitely had my partner screaming in excitement, which was adorable in itself. Some of the more memorable levels revolve around popular Sony franchises like God of War, with Astro wielding Kratos’ axe on one planet. Team Asobi have really tapped into Sony’s treasure troves, going way beyond simple Crash Bandicoot Recalls and in weird and wonderful games like LocoRoco And Vib Band.
And now let me really get excited. Astro Bot is beautiful, and not just in a cartoonish way. The landscapes are sharp and vibrant with interactive detail, and it seems like every pixel has been polished to perfection. But it’s the game’s physics that power it all – when Astro lands on a giant inflatable daisy, the material bulges beneath his little feet, deforming with every step and movement, making the entire scene look absolutely squeezable.
When skating in the snowy levels, Astro picks up speed and spins in place, and the DualSense responds with the sounds and vibrations of a sharp knife cutting through thick ice. (Side note: I could happily play an entire game just skating… as long as it’s not called “ice skating.”) Astro Glide.) Tons of tactile objects like sprinkles, cubes, skulls, and glass stars are scattered throughout the levels, and walking through them is not only satisfying in an ASMR sense, but sometimes uncovers a new secret. When rain hits Astro’s transparent umbrella hat, the sound is perfectly mirrored on the DualSense, along with the feel of raindrops on the handles. Each stage has appropriate background music, funky or big band or synth-like, and always with a catchy hook. Astro BotThe sound effects, haptics, graphics and physics harmonize perfectly and turn any surface into a playground. It’s magical.
On the cute side of things, Astro reacts to his surroundings with endearing animations like shivering in the cold, quaking in fear, and excitedly tapping his tiny metal feet, and his bot friends are similarly expressive. When Astro bangs his head on an impassable ceiling, he makes the cutest little wincing motion. The bots turn around and shake their butts at Astro right before he slams them into the DualSense. The pause screen lets you flick all your collected bots out of the digital controller and send them spinning in the air before they land safely back in the touchpad. Pretty much everything the bots do is adorable.
Astro Bot underlines the importance of the game. It is Super Mario Bros. for a new generation of video game fans, an introduction to common game mechanics and a great challenge for experienced players. In both cases Astro Bot radiates joy. If this, alongside new titles like Lego Horizon Adventuresignals a new and less rigid direction for Sony, then I am excited to see what the future holds. For now, however, I will try to give 100 percent Astro Botand I was cursing and laughing the whole time.
