Team Asobi’s upcoming Astro Bot for PlayStation 5, will feature an overhauled game engine and will take around 12 to 15 hours to complete.
In a new interview with Team Asobi’s Studio Director and Creative Director, Nicolas Doucet, French journalist and YouTuber Julien Chièze talked about the sequel to 2020’s Astro’s Playroom. Featuring 80 levels, we already knew that the sequel would be the studio’s biggest game to date, but know we also got additional details about the actual length of the main game. As revealed by Doucet, the team would rather reduce the length of the game, than get repetitive. Team Asobi wanted a sequel with a constant tempo instead of just stretching out the game. Apparently, the team never aimed for the game to be 20+ hours. Instead, they opted for a game length of around 12 to 15 hours. Many players consider this as the sweet spot for platform titles in this day and age.
Compared to the 2020 PS5 launch title, Astro Bot will feature an overhauled game engine, resulting in additional physics as well as improved visuals. In addition, for this sequel, Asobi formed an internal ‘DualSense 2.0’ team consisting of three to four people in order to think out new ideas on how to use the PS5 DualSense controller. As most of you recall, Astro’s PlayRoom was already a showcase for Sony’s PS5 controller, and from the looks of it, Astro Bot will make even better use of the DualSense. We’ve included the interview with Doucet below. Be sure to watch it as it includes additional details about the upcoming PS5 title.
As covered yesterday, Team Asobi ditched an open-world design for Astro Bot in favor of in-game variety. “Actually, we did consider, at first: should this be an open world game?”, the Creative Director said in the latest issue of EDGE Magazine. “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.”
Astro Bot launches worldwide on PS5 on September 26. It’s likely that the game will also get a PC release later on.
