Cocoon (2023)

 

Cocoon was one of the nicest surprises of 2023. Developed by one of the designers of puzzle platformers Limbo and Inside it is a brilliant exercise in puzzle design centering on managing increasingly more complex moving parts within strange, bio-mechanical, worlds.

It shares with Limbo and Inside a few traits: the lack of written or oral context (although the story is not really as dramatic here), the simple controls with just directions and a single action button, the timing-based puzzles and the instant-kills that send you back to checkpoint, which here are more frustrating than they were jarring in its predecessors. These last two features are a way to inject some action and tension into the normally more laidback procedures of puzzle games. Indeed, if anything, you zip along pretty quickly and progress quite rapidly with various puzzles coming quick and fast. There is rarely the need to pause for a moment of introspection and the action controls keep you always on the move.

Although the story explores themes of escape and transformation and the infinitely large and infinitely small, much like Inside, here the lack of context voids the story of a sense of meaning or purpose. Since there is not much of a story, the four worlds you explore and manipulate happen to be the main feature and the only unifying measure of context to everything that unfolds. You play an insectoid who, by an unknown reason, is granted a power to activate certain platforms and helpers. Pretty early on you’ll be able to dive into different worlds, which are thematically different and, even better, jump out of them, carry them on your back and while doing so jumping into another world, thereby creating worlds within worlds.

The puzzles are mostly platform based: activate a setter here, that’ll allow you to traverse a platform, then go and pick up a world to set it ahead, and so on. This mechanically satisfying progression (aided by the simple, zippy controls and a great amount of logic in execution) is punctuated by boss battles. These are similar to The Legend of Zelda type ones, meaning they’re also action-based puzzles, often relying on timing and with various phases, each trickier than the last. One wrong move and you’re booted back to the beginning of the battle.

As they’re so central to the game, it’s worth arguing about the puzzle design. In the end, perhaps because it’s my second time around, instead of the “ha-ha!” moments, there is a sense of just being led by the designers to see clever bits, but that are not rationally demanding. The world is contorted to conform to the puzzle design, instead of the other way around. This is perhaps hard to explain or ultimately unfair to the designers but while certainly well designed and, I’ll say it again, mechanically satisfying to manipulate, the impression most puzzles give is that the designers wanted to show off their designs and we’re just playing through them, as if the puzzles only exist for the sake of existing. They are perhaps too transparent, and more of a spectacle.
As I’ve started this month with two other puzzle adventures, in Creaks and Obduction, perhaps it would be an interesting exercise to compare these three. In these other games, there is more of the feeling of conquest of the fiendish puzzle – often times conquering it despite the efforts of the designer to stop you! In games of this nature it is a crucial effort. If it doesn’t feel earned, it transmits the feeling of pointlessness. Thus, while in Creaks and Obduction the game world was certainly as important as it is here, but the puzzles were a way to hide the world and every puzzle solved was a way to inch further, go deeper and unravel the mystery, here solving a puzzle is often rewarded by spectacle, but no real purpose. Our character’s certainly going somewhere but there is rarely a sense of accomplishment. Even with bosses it’s hard to understand why you’re being attacked and why you should attack back.

One of the most annoying things are some heritage from modern design, namely controller vibrations that are too violent and frequent (thankfully they can be turned off) and visual effects that are too intense. This is a game that has a certainly unique and interesting visual design but not cutting edge graphics. However, it makes the GPU whirr, which is surprising. There is then some sense that, while the graphics and animation give life to this strange world, there was no need, mechanically speaking, to justify all of these fireworks, and the game would probably work as well with simpler graphics, as flOw or Flower, or indeed Limbo and Inside have shown in the past.

Despite its failings, which might be more apparent for repeat players like me, when the spectacle and the uniqueness of the world and mechanics are not new anymore this is certainly a game worthy of merit. While losing narrative focus it is mechanically more ambitious than Inside and presents an original take on a rarely considered genre. Certainly recommended for fans or those looking for something different.