I suppose this game really makes you "feel like an insect" the way you autopilot your way through most of it. But to be totally honest, I didn't dislike it at all.
There's something to be said about a game completely riding on vibes and Cocoon certainly achieves great success with this. The visuals are utterly fantastic with loads of detail and a beautiful mesh of organic and mechanical that is more on the shiny, metallic side of things rather than something more gory and visceral like Scorn. The worlds you go through are visually very distinct so you're never really lost and makes the transitions between them, especially in the later areas, that much cooler. The music is appropriately a blend of high synth flairs and never lets up giving another layer of high polish to my time through it. Presentation is just top notch across the board with smooth animations and satisfying sounds. And this carries the game pretty hard through the fairly dull gameplay that only really gets interesting towards the end.
For the most part, the gameplay involves very mundane and fairly rote puzzles that barely require thought with some boss battles that punctuate the end of a few chapters as you carry orbs through levels and use them to open up further areas with the single-button-controls. I was only really mildly stumped at a couple of points towards the end where the game starts to shine and use all of its mechanics in a cool way but before it builds on that it ends. It's a very short experience at about 3-5 hours depending on how fast you go through it but the game lacks in challenge which you would expect from something as mind-melting as being able to enter and exit multiple layered worlds but that was not to be. There's also far too much polish given in certain places where the developers were afraid of giving you too much leeway and actively strip away extraneous puzzle elements that are no longer relevant right before your eyes which makes it a little too obvious how linear the experience is.
While the puzzle elements are certainly lacking a bit, there's something to be said about the meditative effect it had on me as I played this little insect hurriedly going about its way to an indeterminate end with whatever goals it had in mind. Walking through the many lovely worlds was calming and the small obstacles elevated it above a bare music video. I think I could definitely recommend this to people who don't play games much or even children as a puzzle game to get them started in the genre. The hook of the pretty visuals and sounds would certainly work on a lot of people. It definitely worked on me.
There's something to be said about a game completely riding on vibes and Cocoon certainly achieves great success with this. The visuals are utterly fantastic with loads of detail and a beautiful mesh of organic and mechanical that is more on the shiny, metallic side of things rather than something more gory and visceral like Scorn. The worlds you go through are visually very distinct so you're never really lost and makes the transitions between them, especially in the later areas, that much cooler. The music is appropriately a blend of high synth flairs and never lets up giving another layer of high polish to my time through it. Presentation is just top notch across the board with smooth animations and satisfying sounds. And this carries the game pretty hard through the fairly dull gameplay that only really gets interesting towards the end.
For the most part, the gameplay involves very mundane and fairly rote puzzles that barely require thought with some boss battles that punctuate the end of a few chapters as you carry orbs through levels and use them to open up further areas with the single-button-controls. I was only really mildly stumped at a couple of points towards the end where the game starts to shine and use all of its mechanics in a cool way but before it builds on that it ends. It's a very short experience at about 3-5 hours depending on how fast you go through it but the game lacks in challenge which you would expect from something as mind-melting as being able to enter and exit multiple layered worlds but that was not to be. There's also far too much polish given in certain places where the developers were afraid of giving you too much leeway and actively strip away extraneous puzzle elements that are no longer relevant right before your eyes which makes it a little too obvious how linear the experience is.
While the puzzle elements are certainly lacking a bit, there's something to be said about the meditative effect it had on me as I played this little insect hurriedly going about its way to an indeterminate end with whatever goals it had in mind. Walking through the many lovely worlds was calming and the small obstacles elevated it above a bare music video. I think I could definitely recommend this to people who don't play games much or even children as a puzzle game to get them started in the genre. The hook of the pretty visuals and sounds would certainly work on a lot of people. It definitely worked on me.