Astro Bot's Audience Isn't Kids or Adults—It's Both

Learn how the developers behind Sony's promising-looking platformer, Astro Bot, want to make both of its audiences happy.

Astro’s Playroom is a delightful platformer and a certified toybox of creativity that’s been included with every PlayStation 5 since it launched. “Pack-in” games were once commonplace, but these days, companies would, understandably, prefer that you buy every video game. The cute robot at the heart of Astro Bot, Captain Astro, looks like a character out of a Nintendo game, and the game's developer, Team Asobi, was very conscious that Astro's Playroom might be played by people of every age and skill.

"In Astro’s Playroom, it’s something that no one noticed but the entire game can be played without using the hover, you can do single jumps," said Team Asobi studio head and creative director Nicolas Doucet during a recent interview with Crossplay at Summer Game Fest, an annual showcase for video games. "That was intentional."

In September, Team Asobi will release its most ambitious Astro game yet, the simply titled Astro Bot. Its VR game, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, was spectacular. Astro's Playroom, despite being a "pack-in" game, was also spectacular. This is a developer that’s been regularly making Nintendo-quality games for PlayStation consoles, and there's every reason to believe this will be the moment it all breaks mainstream.

"We have these two audiences, and we really want to hit on both of these," said Doucet, whose history with platformers goes back to the NES, but whose personal appreciation didn't fully blossom until the advent of 3D platformers. "Potentially, this is going to be the game played for the first time by a generation and some young kids. For them, what’s in it for them is something that we also care a lot about."

With Astro's Playroom, Doucet knew his game was acting like an introduction to PlayStation. In retrospect, he believes final boss might've been too much, but the goal of trying to please these two audiences simultaneously is "a prediction, not a science."

The first level of Astro Bot is park-like in design. That's on purpose, encouraging players to experiment with the world, learn the controls, and become comfortable.

"You can run around and you can feel the water haptics and you can splash the water and you have little balls to kick," said Doucet. "All of that is really, really important. We always keep that toy aspect inside the whole game. It’s something that lives with us."

Team Asobi didn't advertise that Astro's Playroom could be completed with a single jump. Like Nintendo, Team Asobi prioritizes hiding difficulty levels seamlessly into its design. There's a terrific Game Maker's Toolkit video about this with Mario games, but the short version is this: rather than choosing "easy" or "hard,” the level design allows players to navigate between difficulty paths, often unaware they’re doing so.

"For some games, it works to have a drop down menu and have these difficulties," said Doucet. "But we don’t want to go down that route. Being a platformer, fundamentally, what are you going to do? A jump is a jump. You aren’t going to be making that distance longer or shorter because that would be a headache. [laughs] Imagine an easy mode where everything gets close together."

Across every Astro game, the team has a specific approach to level design: main path and side pockets. The main path is what's in front of the player, and should "give a sense of peril, but also a younger [player] can still get there." Side pockets are to the left and right, where challenge escalates and "you're going to have these tight jumps."

In the new game, there are additional opportunities for the team to turn the screws and tax your fingers, with optional challenge stages unlocked as you move through the game's six colorful and varied worlds. Even these are sorted by difficulty, and as someone who personally played through two recently, I can tell you they are very hard!

(But very good.) 

Even there, the team is mindful of the audience who might be playing such stages.

"What we do with these challenges is we match them, pair them with characters," said Doucet. "We try to pair them with characters that make sense for the audience. The funny, furry, colorful characters might be on the main path because that’s what we want kids to enjoy, whereas a really dark or deep cut that might only be relevant to a gamers audience might be found inside one of these challenges. We don’t do it perfectly, I’d say, but as much as possible we try to have a good fit."

Astro's Playroom was never meant to be a full adventure. It's why the team could ensure the game could be completed, front to back, with simple jumps. It's more complicated with Astro Bot, which spans across six worlds and many more hours. That said, it isn't leaving kids behind. The team is just shifting how it thinks about it.

"What we say is that the first galaxy of six, that’s the one that anybody should be able to get to the boss or clear," said Doucet. "But after that, if a six-year-old can’t get past that level, that’s okay. That’s probably overtime. The other thing is the learning curve with that kind of age, that audience is also very, very high. They quickly pick things up. We also have to take that into account. But we think 'okay, if a very young gamer can get the first galaxy,' that’s already a lot. Galaxy two? What kind of profile can clear galaxy two? Galaxy four? Five? Six?"

As Doucet said: it's a prediction, not a science. But I'm glad they're thinking about it.

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Also:

• This game is so good, y’all. I cannot wait for more people to play it, and with any luck, it’ll finally get Team Asobi the attention it’s deserved since their VR game.

• I should try Astro’s Playroom with my oldest, who was too young when the PlayStation 5 came out, but would probably be the right age to give it a shot now.

• The challenge levels really made me sweat, and it was both funny and embarrassing when the folks guiding the demo applauded as people beat them.