Synopsis

Aboard a massive mothership shaped like a PlayStation 5, Astro travels through space with his crew of little robots when a sudden attack destroys the ship. Its different components are scattered across the galaxy, while hundreds of Astro’s companions are thrown onto distant and unfamiliar worlds.

Alone aboard his small Dual Speeder, Astro sets out to explore planet after planet in order to rescue his lost crew, recover the missing parts of the mothership and rebuild what was destroyed. His journey takes him through constantly changing environments filled with creatures, traps, bosses and unexpected encounters, including many familiar faces drawn from the history of PlayStation.

Overview

A console rarely gets a game that seems to have been built by looking at every piece of its hardware and asking: “what fun thing could we do with this?” ASTRO BOT works precisely that way. Haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, the DualSense speaker, the PS5’s SSD and even the visual imagination of PlayStation itself become creative materials rather than a simple list of technical features.

Team Asobi had already explored this idea with Astro’s Playroom, installed on every PS5 at the console’s launch. ASTRO BOT, however, changes the scale completely. The little robot leaves behind his role as a technological guide to become the hero of a full 3D platformer built around more than fifty planets, new powers, bosses, secrets and hundreds of bots to rescue.

The premise takes only a few seconds to establish: the PS5 mothership is destroyed, its crew is scattered across the galaxies and Astro sets off to bring everyone back together. The story remains deliberately simple. It mainly serves as an excuse for what Team Asobi seems to enjoy most: introducing an idea, playing with it for a few minutes, then moving on before it has time to become routine.

That generosity gives the game its distinctive rhythm. One level can turn Astro into a giant sponge, another gives him extendable boxing gloves, while a new companion can suddenly change the way he climbs, moves or attacks. ASTRO BOT is not searching for the depth of a system players will study for a hundred hours. It prefers the repeated delight of a good idea arriving just as the previous one might begin to wear out.

Key takeaways

  • A full game after Astro’s Playroom. Team Asobi takes the ideas developed around the PS5 and expands them into a much larger adventure designed as a standalone platformer.
  • The DualSense is part of the gameplay. Vibration, adaptive triggers and tactile sensations do more than accompany the action: they regularly shape how the player perceives surfaces, powers and Astro’s movements.
  • Each level searches for its own idea. The game frequently refreshes its mechanics through transformations, companions and specific interactions that temporarily change the rules.
  • PlayStation becomes a universe in itself. More than 150 characters inspired by games and series connected to PlayStation history appear as VIP bots, sometimes accompanied by levels that directly reinterpret their worlds.
  • Accessibility does not prevent occasional spikes in difficulty. The main adventure remains welcoming, while certain optional levels and platforming challenges demand much greater precision.

PANACHES review

ASTRO BOT has a quality that has become strangely rare: it seems happy to be a video game. It does not need to justify every mechanic with an enormous progression system, a map overflowing with activities or the promise of hundreds of hours. An idea can simply exist because it is fun to play with for five minutes.

That apparent simplicity hides extremely precise design work. Levels naturally direct the player’s attention, introduce their mechanics without lengthy explanations and almost always know when to stop using an idea. Team Asobi understands an old rule of platform game design: a good surprise is often more valuable when it has not been repeated twenty times.

The DualSense also finds one of its most convincing uses here. Walking across metal, sliding over a surface, pulling on a spring or launching Astro does not simply produce a different animation on screen. The controller becomes part of the sensation itself. This constant dialogue between image, sound and touch sometimes makes it feel as though you are manipulating a digital toy rather than simply controlling a character.

The tribute to PlayStation could easily have become overwhelming. The references are numerous, sometimes very explicit, and some of them will obviously resonate more strongly with players who have lived through several generations of Sony consoles. But the game has enough ideas of its own not to depend entirely on nostalgia. Astro no longer works only as the little robot tasked with demonstrating what a console can do. He is beginning to develop a language of his own.

Not everything needs to become more complicated in order to become better. ASTRO BOT makes that point with disarming confidence: a few buttons, a strong level idea and the pleasure of discovering what lies around the next corner can still be enough to build a great game.

Good to know

  • ASTRO BOT was released on September 6, 2024 exclusively for PlayStation 5.
  • The game was developed in Tokyo by Team Asobi, a studio within PlayStation Studios, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.
  • PlayStation officially describes ASTRO BOT as a 3D action-platformer. It is a single-player experience.
  • The adventure features more than 50 planets and around 300 bots to rescue, including more than 150 VIP bots inspired by characters connected to PlayStation history.
  • The DualSense plays a central role in the experience through haptic feedback, adaptive triggers and its built-in speaker.
  • At The Game Awards 2024, ASTRO BOT won four awards: Game of the Year, Best Game Direction, Best Action/Adventure and Best Family.
  • The game received a Metascore of 94/100 on PlayStation 5 and ranked among the highest-rated releases of 2024.
  • Team Asobi continued expanding the game after launch with several free levels, including challenges and speedrun courses featuring additional special bots.