Cocoon's core premise is an evocative meditation on puzzle mechanics. A player's thought process should never come unraveled in this mysterious universe of overlapping worlds and expertly crafted "a ha!" moments that propel to new reveals and deeper brain teasers.
Several times throughout Cocoon I experienced the exhilarating feeling of figuring out the solution to a problem a second too late.
In many of the best puzzle games of our time–Portal 2, The Witness, and Inside to name a few–players will spend time gawking at a piece of environment trying to decipher how their given tool set will get them from Point A to Point B. Often, however, the end goal of an individual puzzle or room is usually found at Point D or H, further along the chain of questions players need to find the answer to.
Cocoon tingled my brain numerous times. But the moments that delighted me most were when I began at Point A headed towards an end goal only to see a new wrinkle break through the surface. Point B had actually become Point C in the string of solutions.
Unlike an intense, captivating narrative game, puzzle games often don’t linger with me. Like a headache, the harder ones itch the back of your mind in the hours you aren’t playing them, your brain gurgling in the attempt to figure out what you were missing. Simpler ones may burn brightly the moments after completion but fizzle out of memory days if not hours later.
I had dreams about Cocoon.
Dreams about solving its fascinating globular worlds. Dreams constructed out of puzzles that weren’t actually in the game but my sleeping self constructed out of nebulous memory. I would wake up almost panicked, thinking I hadn’t beaten the game despite rolling credits and getting all the achievements. And the strangest thing was that I dreamed about solving its puzzles, not its mysterious, evocative world that had questions of its own.
Jeppe Carlsen, who was the lead gameplay designer behind Playdead’s Limbo and Inside, has his DNA written all over Cocoon. His studio, Geometric Interactive, has built a game which evokes both those classics without pantomiming. Cocoon‘s world is one of infinite amounts of questions that are not overtly resolved. The further players plunge into its organic, biomechanical depths, the deeper its mysteries become.
Carlsen’s footprint is more recognizable in the game’s simplistic control scheme that allows puzzles to feel more organic and environment-based. Cocoon only uses directional inputs and one button for interaction, nothing else. Though simple, it is never limited or basic. Players don’t have extraneous systems to manage and must only keep stock of the knowledge they’ve gained over the course of the game.
In Cocoon, players control an insectoid character with wings. Imagine a beetle that stands upright with just a touch of humanoid. The game opens on a desert-like world that feels barren of life outside normal flora and fauna. A soundscape of buzzy, rising synths set the mood and conjure memories of Disasterpeace.
But this world, much like ours, is contained within a singular orb. And soon players are jettisoned from this arid red landscape into a place that’s cold, mechanical–possibly a factory of some sort. That desert world is now a glowing reddish-orange globe that players can pick up and carry around.
Herein lies the central premise of Cocoon and what separates it from the pack. Each world or galaxy or planet–you’re not sure which–is contained within another. The orb can act as a power source, being used to power long-dormant devices. Platforms will rise, walls can shift, and paths become unlocked. Initially, the tools are limited because players only have one place they can hop out of and one place they can hop into.
The inception begins when players reach their third accessible world, which becomes the second “tool” to work with. This newest area is a swampy jungle that uses green as its primary color. Instead of rocky cliffs there are stretches of water and lush vegetation. Players can lob the red world onto their back and hop into the jungle with it. Conversely, the green orb can be brought into the red world to open previously inaccessible pathways.
Further complexity is added by granting a unique power to each of the colored orbs. The red orb will give form to unseen pathways while the green orb shifts matter, cycling it between solid and gas. These powers are only active while players are carrying the equipped orb or it is otherwise activated by an outside source.
Cocoon‘s masterstroke is in its handling of these varying systems. At no point did the mechanics feel overly busy or complex. When a mechanical revelation occurred, it invoked wonder rather than worry, enticing players as to what creative implementations Geometric Interactive had in store.
Because these mechanics feel so natural despite how astounding they actually are, players become acclimated to their curiosities within minutes. That is because Cocoon–and, by extension, Carlsen through his work–understand how to synergize player behavior and puzzle mechanics. But Cocoon doesn’t have a fail state like death. The only thing that comes close is a hard stop as players attempt to stitch together their knowledge in a particularly difficult sequence.
Cocoon doles out experimentation with its systems at a brisk but thoughtful pace. Without words the game often visually expresses what a player should do. Orbs need to be placed in circular spots near key places that look important. The music will swell not when a player is headed in the correct direction but when they are headed in the correct direction with a proper orb. It’s Cocoon‘s form of a vocal cheer or a pat on the back. A player will discover something new and the game sequentially places increasingly complex challenges in front of them.
That’s part of the reason why I felt so rewarded when just missing the solution a half-beat before Cocoon placed it in front of me. One mechanic of the game introduces a small flying companion that follows the player along clearing out barriers in search of being deposited at a flower-like structure. The companion has a searchlight that points in the direction players need to go, offering one of the only instances of overt guidance in the game. However, in the jungle world a new obstacle is introduced that traps the companion and teleports it back a few feet to the start of the “puzzle” or path.
The first time players are introduced to this obstacle, it’s not apparent what will happen until the companion is snatched away. A lesson learned. Then it is up to the player to recognize for the remainder of the game what will happen when this situation is placed in front of them. Early on, players are tasked with taking this companion across a straight path with this obstacle. The player character can progress but they lose their companion and must go retrieve it. At the other end is the red orb simply waiting. The second before my companion was snatched up the light bulb in my brain went off and I knew that I was supposed to simply bring the companion into the desert world and hop back into the jungle, bypassing the obstacle. But it was too late. “Damn,” I said with a smile.
Cocoon elicited that reaction from me countless times. Like its core mechanic, the solutions to puzzles are often layered in the knowledge players gain over its eight to ten hours. Players will learn how entry and exit points of worlds work. Orbs can be placed on creatures that will follow the player around to activate pressure plates. Puzzles will introduce timed interactions. Eventually moments will occur where players have to think about how these worlds and orbs line up within each other and how events need to be manipulated in one that cascade into the others.
That growing complexity is never soured. Despite being a puzzle game, difficulty is never a crutch that Cocoon leans on. I can only reflect on two or three times in which I felt stuck and didn’t know how to progress. These moments weren’t necessarily brick walls, just ones that the exact solution eluded me. A small part of this extends from the fact that Cocoon does not expressly tell the player where to go. Once in awhile, this can lead to an aimless search for progress. Other times, there’s a distinct feeling you might not be doing the right thing.
Thankfully, Geometric Interactive has a tendency to close off paths when they no longer serve purpose to the player. I remember a number of times where doors and paths audibly and visually closed themselves off after passing through, which I later understood the true meaning of. Still, I did become stuck at one particular puzzle because I thought I was missing some key element. I thought I knew the solution but there must have been some other thing that had eluded me. After about 15 minutes of grasping at straws experimentation I accidentally solved the puzzle having understood the assignment but not all the steps but still stumbling on the solution. It didn’t feel great but that’s okay, you can’t always. Funnily enough, as in most puzzle games, simpler solutions took a bit because my brain became too big or I merely forgot a basic mechanic, resulting in an appropriate facepalm.
A handful of boss fights bookmark key points in Cocoon and they are more endurance spectacle rather than tedious challenge. They require players to dodge attacks and learn a handful of patterns to conquer. Only twice did I get hit in a boss fight that wasn’t the final major encounter. Taking damage boots players out of the current world they are in, resetting an encounter which takes less than a few minutes and seconds to return to.
The visual language in Cocoon speaks volumes to the player. Its ability to communicate a sense of place and scale from a mostly isometric viewpoint dazzles. A simple perspective switch can reveal the hidden order to activate glyphs, masked by environmental secrets and unseen details. These alien habitats teeming with parallels of Earth’s insects but laced with mechanical tubes and foreign bodies that ooze and crawl along walls.
As Cocoon progresses, the player learns so much about the intricacies of its story and the nature of its mechanics and world. While a deeper meaning and understanding may elude some on a singular playthrough, I feel confident that I scoured its depths and would only appreciate it more on a second visit. It is rare that puzzle games not only progress a player’s knowledge core but challenge it in a way that feels natural. By the end of Cocoon, expect your mastery to be fully rewarded with layers of complexity that could only be accomplished in this game. While the fundamentals rarely divert from the initial formula, I cannot express the surprising ways in which Cocoon departs from its own boundaries while blossoming players’ expectations. Only the best kinds of these games can pull off setpieces and subtle genre shifts while not abandoning what made them unique in the first place. Cocoon does just that.
Cocoon is a deeply special game that gushes with expertise from the talented minds that programmed it. By constantly expanding upon the unique mechanic of layered world-hopping, players are gifted with an absolute darling of a puzzle game. Cocoon is one that is rarely meant to stump with obtuse solutions, instead becoming a constantly evolving challenge that travels through spectacular alien worlds and rewarding moments. I never wish to be lost in puzzle games, merely wrapped up. Cocoon is a metamorphosis, one to be gladly wrapped in.
