Sometimes the biggest adventures don’t need the world you traverse to be vast, but rather for the hero to be really, really small. Cocoon is a game that focusses in on the micro as opposed to the massive, featuring worlds nestled within worlds and an insectoid protagonist jumping between them. What is this insect? Why is it doing this? I’m still a little unsure, but the quality of the world-building and puzzles is not in doubt.
Cocoon conveys an alien world brilliantly through its presentation. Colour is used to distinguish between the different dimensions you traverse and the environment is filled with alien structures and lifeforms – the latter rarely engaging with you directly (aside from some tonally distinct boss fights) but serving to emphasise that you are a tiny part of this wider world. The end of the game offers a degree of closure and goes some way to explaining why you have embarked on the proceeding journey, but still retains an air of mystery and obscurity.
Controlling your little insect dude is a simple affair. You can run around, pick up and carry spheres, and interact with buttons and pressure plates. The spheres have specific abilities when you carry them, ranging from activating hidden platforms to shooting a bolt of energy, and all of these are vital to solving the many environmental puzzles that block your way. If I was being picky I would say that the puzzles are somewhat restrictive and can only be solved one way, but given the depth and complexity of later ones I can see why a more open route is avoided.
Early on the puzzles mostly revolve around carrying a sphere from one location to another and activating buttons and levers along the way. It isn’t long before you are forced to put spheres inside one another to solve more head-scratching conundrums and a few of the later examples require a degree of spatial thinking that would make Christopher Nolan sweat. On the whole, though, these puzzles are wonderfully designed and contained so that you can’t break them or get stuck wandering around. They aren’t single room experiences per se, but you can see how carefully the game is designed to prevent sequence breaking or getting stuck.
That being said, the focused nature of these puzzles does mean that they don’t ever reach the extreme challenge that some may want from such a game. Personally, as a gamer who prefers narrative over roadblocks for the most part, I think the difficulty is pitched pretty well. The main obstacle I found was a puzzle midway through that required me to do something with a sphere that I had forgotten I could, so that one was mostly on me.
There are several boss fights scattered throughout the game, with each sphere being protected by a larger insectoid enemy. These boss fights are generally puzzles in and of themselves and are used to teach you new mechanics, but some manual dexterity is required. Towards the latter parts of the story there is a repeating encounter that feels more like a Rhythm Paradise minigame than a puzzle which felt a little out of place.
