Why Astro Bot Proved Platformers Still Matter
2024-11-03 · 5 min read
When Team Asobi released Astro Bot in September 2024, the gaming discourse was dominated by live-service shutdowns and open-world fatigue. Then this little robot showed up and reminded everyone that the simplest pleasures in gaming, running, jumping, and discovering secrets, are still the most satisfying when executed with genuine craft.
The game won Game of the Year at The Game Awards 2024, beating out heavyweight contenders. That a platformer could claim gaming's biggest prize in an era dominated by narrative-driven epics felt like a statement. Astro Bot was not trying to be cinema. It was trying to be a video game, and it was better at being a video game than almost anything else released that year.
Mechanically, Astro Bot is a masterclass in level design. Every stage introduces a new idea, explores it thoroughly, then moves on before it gets stale. The DualSense controller's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers are used so inventively that the game becomes a genuine argument for the PS5 hardware. You feel surfaces, weather, and impacts in your hands.
The PlayStation cameos and Easter eggs turned each level into a celebration of gaming history. Finding references to Shadow of the Colossus, Bloodborne, and PaRappa the Rapper felt like exploring a museum curated by people who genuinely love this medium. It was nostalgic without being lazy, using familiar characters in mechanically inventive ways.
Astro Bot also proved that shorter games have immense value. You can see everything in around 12 hours, and none of those hours feel padded. In a market where games routinely demand 80-plus hours of your time, a tight, joyful experience with no filler and no microtransactions felt almost revolutionary. Sometimes a game should just be fun. Astro Bot remembered that.
