Sony might not have much this year coming from its own PlayStation Studios, but Astro Bot certainly is the notable exception. Unveiled during May’s State of Play broadcast, Astro Bot promised to be the biggest game made to date by Team Asobi with 80 levels.
Speaking to EDGE Magazine (issue #400), Team Asobi’s Studio Director and Creative Director Nicolas Doucet revealed that the developer considered an open world design but decided against it to provide optimal variety.
Actually, we did consider, at first: should this be an open world game? In the end, we went for a level-based approach, because that was the one that gave us the most control over the game’s variety.
On that note, Doucet also said Astro Bot will continuously provide players with new mechanics to learn and experiment with to avoid repetition.
We don’t really stretch any mechanic too much until it becomes repetitive. We give you just enough to want more, and then move on to something else. We want it to be fresh, to be really surprising the player.
Power-ups will be key to the ever-changing mechanics, as Team Asobi only plans to use each two to three times throughout the entire game.
Usually, we use them twice. Up to three times maximum. The first time you use the power-up, you get introduced a little bit to what the next use case will be. Like a preview of what’s to come. There will also be free DLC coming that really takes the power-ups to a level of high precision.
Astro Bot, which won’t support PS VR2 despite the franchise’s debut on the original PlayStation VR, is slated to launch for PlayStation 5 on September 26. Considering Sony’s aggressive multiplatform strategy, we might see the game launching on PC, too, at some point in the next couple of years.
