A decent little game. Having just discovered Jack's games a few days ago, I've quickly become enamored with his completely unique and strange style when it comes to making games.

This is only the second game I've played from him and despite its incredibly short playtime, it still manages to be quite compelling, taking you through 3 separate stories that happen on Christmas. The first one seems to be the most fleshed-out and the longest of the bunch, but I think I liked the 3rd story the most. Perhaps it could've been better overall if each story was given more time to explore its themes. It definitely leaves a lot to your imagination, but maybe a bit too much to be honest.

The soundtrack is pretty great too!

Orbital Companion

The perfect game to play right before moving, this nonverbal rumbly treat is all about using unique orbs as portals to transport between spaces to unlock doors and find more orbs. Most of the game is spent doing albeit simple puzzles involving the diferrent colored orbs and the worlds they are attached to. For instance the first orb is orange which you use to activate switches and walk across invisible bridges. Much of the mid game is spent trying to juggle these various orbs and the portals you activate with them in order to make progress and while only a few moments will have you truly stuck, the moment of realization of what to do is always pleasing and satisfying.

The lead level designer behind Cocoon, Jeppe Carlsen, has also worked on Limbo and Inside. Two other nonverbal puzzling oddities, that focus on visual spendlor and the satisfaction of solving a puzzle towards the ominous unknown with far less focus on complexity. This makes sense because in some ways a difficult puzzle can actually halt the entire momentum of the aciton and the world. I would refer to most the puzzles in Cocoon more as 'fidget puzzles' than full fledged head scratchers, wherein a lot of it is backtracking for the item that you need. You play as this cute little bug creature so you can only carry one orb at a time and for whatever reason you're forced to place them down in specific sockets. Dont want to lose them by accident! So a lot of it ends up being pick up ball A move it to the new location, go back, and do the same with ball B. Again, this can be tedious but it's also meditative, helped by the soothing electric ambient score that unlike in other games in this genre (Gris etc) compliment the visuals rather than call out to themselves.

The real bite here is the visuals, unfortunately, the website I'm posting through doesnt have image/gif support, but it must be said how vitally well done this is. There is no other game where opening a door has felt this good. This is due in part to the immaculate sound design, the clinking and clattering of mechanical parts whirling help set the atmosphere and, while often mixed a little too loudly for my tastes, are almost always densely developed and done well. It's hard to talk about the visuals and my hesitations, I think that the plasticene world aesthetic looks nice, but is a bit too 'silicone valley sci fi' in its approach to the cleanliness of everything. For instance the staircases work in the context of the spidery bug world we are in, but you can see stairs that have a similar spindliness in a few gaudy megamansions from time to time. More importantly, the world of Cocoon lacks ecological 'dirt'. The world is in many ways too clean, theres no grime over anything so it ends up having the same textureless shine to the objects. On the other hand, monumental changes in environment or large objects look gorgeous.

I think the biggest problem with Cocoon is that there's no dash button. The way the game is set up, you have a radial walk and a single input button, sometimes you hold that input. The issue is, your bug buddy walks a bit on the slower side so you find yourself sauntering wishes you could make a rumble/dash happen. On the other hand maybe that would make the experience too fidgety, but since the puzzles lack difficulty or depth, it does end up being a lot of monotonous gliding from space to space. It can feel hollow sometimes but, in my case at least, this actually helped the experience. I am moving, and I couldn't help but think of how equally hollow preparing and carry stuff from one location to another is. I'm as meager as this bug is, and while my own 'orbs' are just as meaningful as its, there's this quiet solemness that this isn't quite fun or boring. You can't dash in real life either, transport and movement...it just has this quality of ennui and melancholy attached to it, and I think Cocoon is at its best when it does have this sense of monotony. You know how to solve the puzzle, you figured it out a minute ago but now you have to go through the portal animation and pick the orb up and go place it somewhere.

There are also, strangely enough, puzzle bosses! They are functional! Most of them focusing on positioning over anything else. If you get hit it just resets the fight, no harm done. Most of them are spectacle boss fights so you dont have to worry about getting skill tested. With that said, I do feel weird killing them! It gives me a very shadow of the collusus conundrum to be killing giant monsters in this barren wasteland for my own gain. This sort of reflects the ultimate shallowness of Cocoon wherein the focus is so spent on you feeling like you 'have something to do' that there's no taking anything in or just feeling out an ecological space. Like, I'm almost sad this is a puzzle game because this aesthetic would be amazing for a walking simulator and even teases at that idea towards the end. The world lacks life and you end up robbing it anyways for your opaque goals.

Due to the non verbalness and lack of dialogue plot, this goal stays opaque until the very end, but it just ends up giving the experience a sort of moral numbness. I don't feel like I was even supposed to think about the giant spider I killed so much as that I bested it and now I get the nice orb. Time is not even spent on dwelling on its death. If we flash back to Limbo...this is sort of a disappointment by comparison! In that game we had this big gnarly spider chase us down and slaughter us dozens of times, but then when we amputate and kill it, its not 'well done' its gorey and gross, you feel uncomfortable and even a little lost. By comparison Cocoon doesnt stray into this territory, but because of how cosmicly indulgent the world is, and how everything is a puzzle room, you end up just thinking about whats beyond what you're seeing in a remorseful 'I wish the game went there' sort of way.

It's weird though, I'm not sure I can reccomend whether other people would get anything out of it. It's one of those games that looks good and knows how to plot a beat and keep puzzle momentum, but at the same time its a whole game of just very beautiful busywork with little to offer underneath. I think maybe the best way to tell would be to consider how you feel about school animation short films. For instance MILK DUST is a visual treat focusing on a grand inspirational world, but the moment its over it sort of hums to the back of your mind, buzzing there only to be pulled out randomly as a humored annoyance or 'oh yeah I remember'. Much like moving itself, I think this business but shallowness when you're not is sort of core to the feeling of moving and transportation generally. Like as an experience, Cocoon handles the core aspects of moving, that being the transportational tedium, effectively. Contrast that with the approach of say Unpacking which focuses on organizational coping as a form of zen. That being said, I can only say this from the perspective of extreme bias. I think its neat enough to give a try if you're in the mood for a more light and breezy eye candy take on the mechanics found in Inside or if you liked the scale of the similarly non verbal Tunic or Hyper Light Drifter. Regardless of how much it appeals to you, I certainly wouldn't say its something you need to get to right away.

i wanted to love this game so much. it is kissing at greatness. i genuinely feel it is on the brink. goblins are the hot aesthetic and the game calls your units "gobs" and you collect shiny stones while you crouch-skate down hills. combat is about sneaking behind people and knocking them around so much their turn never comes. you have a patron spirit the size of a mountain who speaks in riddles. the maps specifically warn you they are not magically altered to indicate your current location. it's winking, it's greedy, it's mystical and really invested in Gobs.
i really like part of it! I like wandering the overworld and sliding down hills and scouting by turning into a bird! I am totally captured by the way the story is told and the weird simulation going on in battles where plants grow on top of me.
i just don't like the battles. i'm too impatient for them, i can't get the hang of the interface, and the upgrades feel uninteresting and complicated (I accidentally removed attack from all my units one time). There's no undo button for when you move without checking range or end a turn facing the wrong way because your finger slipped. and the battles are really the whole game. so, like, vibes: impeccable! actual act of playing for me: i really wish this was a walking sim / peaceful exploring / rpg game instead lol

Can't help but feel a little dissatisfied, the prologue & chapter 1 set a tone that hooks you in but doesn't really stick around.

Regardless I enjoyed majority of the game, with 2 exceptions. 1. The ending felt rushed and a certain character felt very unutilised and underdeveloped considering their role. Prior to the "cleansing" I felt the narrative was at a much stronger point. 2. Choices in this game really don't matter, sure there is a couple bad endings but overall the branching timeline doesn't really benefit the story in any major way. It could be argued the prologue sets you up for that fact but ultimately I don't see any reason to have them.

Now I always tend to ramble on the negatives so a few positives to close this out.

The soundtrack (and sound design) while I believe quite small is pretty good, no complaints there. Likewise with the character sprites, and environments, the art in this game is quite gorgeous. Lastly the characters in this game are a lot of fun, minus the one I was referring to earlier, who I won't name to avoid big spoilers. The biggest standouts for me are Erio, Yakko, Richter and Tsutsumi

An interactive visual short story the size of a coffee coaster. The best way to describe why it's probably worth your time is in that it speaks about the small vulnerability shared between girls. I hear the wheezing and the weathered pain of this noise in my sleep. Realizing how asthmatic and exhausting the ghouls of your expression are. The industry of bodies has to keep on turning, but barely. It's all in the identity after the heavy night of drinking at a party.

Investigate the inky midnight through a wounded touch. To you its relayed as a blurb of text but the girls are having a vulnerable moment here, do you mind?
~~~~~
by girls of course I mean the discarded Undead.

From the moment you boot up Type Dreams, it instantly tells you exactly what it wants to say through nothing but its UI and general aesthetic. There's no cursor visible, nor can you cycle through the gorgeous collage-styled menu options with the arrow keys; everything is centered around the keyboard, from the main gameplay loop to the menu itself. You create a profile, choose from one of many typists, choose the kind of writing instrument you'll be using (from the familiar yet OOP digital keyboard to an old-fashioned typewriter, complete with a lack of backspace functionality and manual carriage return!), and off you go.

While there are a few game modes available such as the unimplemented Story Mode or a Competition Mode, wherein you face off against AI opponents to see who can finish the writing assignment the fastest, the most fleshed out mode available is the Library option, where all the different kind of typing assignments lie.

The gameplay is very simple: You choose an assignment from one of many categories, ranging from simple typing exercises to original poetry to smut. Once you've chosen your option, you are immediately thrown into the gameplay, and the timer starts counting. Your task is to copy the words of your typing assignment exactly as they appear. It's very arcade-like in design: The only opponent is yourself, competing for higher WPM counts, less mistakes, faster completion time. I chose the Typewriter as my instrument of choice, and the adherence to it's archaic rules, from a lack of backspace to having to run your finger across the F1-F12 row of your keyboard to simulate carriage return for each line break is both unique and zen-like in it's continued execution. It's incredibly addicting, and the only reason I stopped playing was because my left hand physically cramped up after a lengthy typing assignment.

The real star of the show here is the presentation. Few games are as stylistically intense as Type Dreams. From the keyboard-only, Victorian-era collage UI, to the dynamic era-appropriate piano music that swells and falls in time to your typing, to the unique animations that play on some typing assignments, in-sync with each word completed, to the strict adherence to the archaic hardware of old, Type Dreams is incredibly unique and uncompromising in it's vibes. It's the perfect adaptation of the creative writing process, from the way the environment around your character shifts thematically with each word as you enter The Zone™ and the words fly off from your fingertips, to the hefty typing sounds and accompanying screen shake per letter as you draw your assignment to a close and the euphoria of completion washes over you.

Type Dreams is an anomaly now. Launched in Early Access and perpetually unfinished, seeing as how Hofmeier has scrubbed all traces of him off the internet, Type Dreams has no real ending. Ironically enough, it's like someone just stopped typing mid-paragraph. In a way, it almost feels appropriate: Little more than a ship passing in the night. But I hope that ship docks one day, and everyone will get the chance to try this game out again, because it's truly worth your time.

Honestly whips so hard. Easily one of the most enjoyable mobile games I've ever played. Simple, elegant, gratifying. I could get into the little tricks of design brilliance and all the ways this game just works that come together so cleanly, but I feel like I'd devolve into video-essay-level self-congratulation. So I'll leave it at that: Poinpy whips. Enormous shame that it will probably be ignored by a lot of people because why the fuck is Netflix publishing games? The US needs better trust laws. I just hope this game gets a second wind when Netflix inevitably drops the game stuff and this can (hopefully) get published on its own. Love this little green guy and the big blue monster. Feed big mouth the froot drink!