This is just 3 hours of a little beetle fella beating the absolute shit out of your brain, and if you play it in one sitting like I did, you're utterly delirious by the end. Starts off and you're like, ok, so I can go inside this red orb to access the desert world and leave the red orb to access the scary sci-fi world, neat. And in the final thirty minutes, you're like, ok, so I went in this world to move this orb here, but now I can jump through that orb and position a third orb here to make the fourth orb go up here, but then I need to go back to the first orb to access the third orb and then put the fourth orb in the second orb so that I can make the first orb go back to its original location, and then your brain ceases to function, you foam at the mouth and you immediately lose one year of your life.

In a lot of ways, Cocoon really reminded me of Portal. It introduces a novel puzzle-solving mechanic and then proceeds to expand and evolve that mechanic to the point where you're tackling new, interesting and engaging ideas every fifteen minutes. And when it's out of new stuff to give, the little beetle boy blows you a kiss and you're done. Short, sweet and beautifully lean. Inside is one of my favourite games ever, and I think this lacks a bit of the atmosphere and immersive world-building that made Jeppe Carlsen's last game such a sombre masterpiece, but this really is a top-tier slice of puzzle game fun. Just one core mechanic refined and sharpened to a point; truly masterful design.

The story did absolutely nothing for me though. Listen lil' beetle buddy, I like you and all, but I don't really care what you're up to or who the giant hermit crab man is, and I don't think any super secret ending is gonna change that.