Cocoon opens in a wasteland. The player wakes as a small insectoid creature on barren ground, then finds an orb. That orb is not a key or a weapon. It is a world.
Trailer, via Annapurna Interactive.
A Beetle That Carries Worlds
Geometric Interactive built Cocoon around one idea and refuses to let it go. Each orb the player finds holds an entire world inside it. Step into the orb and you are in that world. Hop out and you are carrying it.
Annapurna Interactive published the game on September 29, 2023, for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One and Xbox Series X/S. It is a third-person puzzle adventure played from a bird’s-eye, isometric view, single player only, with a science-fiction frame.
The structure is the trick. Worlds sit inside worlds, and the orbs move between them. Progression is spatial, not narrative. You do not unlock a door with a key. You carry a world to the place where it fits.
Orbs as Tools, Not Keys
Every orb holds one ability, and that ability becomes a tool once unlocked. The orb powers machinery in the desolate worlds — lifts, platforms, the industrial bones of a dead civilization. Fire projectiles to trigger switches. Find hidden pathways. The orb is both the level and the instrument you use inside other levels.
The environments shift hard: industrial structures, massive organic caverns, biomechanical devices left by an ancient civilization. The player’s job is to work out how these places connect, not just how to cross them.
Cocoon does not explain itself. It hands you a beetle and a sphere and trusts you to notice.
Boss Fights and the Limits of the Loop
Each orb ends with a boss fight. The player must use a mechanic to impede the creature, not simply out-damage it. That is consistent with the rest of the design — the game wants you to think in systems, not reflexes.
The risk in a single-mechanic game is repetition. Cocoon’s answer is escalation: the orbs nest, the abilities stack, and the puzzles ask you to hold more than one world in your head at once. It mostly holds.
Where it slips is in the quiet stretches. A barren wasteland is a deliberate opening, but the game returns to sparse, wordless space often enough that the middle can drift. The puzzles carry it. The atmosphere does not always.
What the Score Reflects
Cocoon earned an 8.9/10 critic aggregate across five outlets. That number is fair, and it points at the right thing. This is a game built by people who trusted one idea completely and executed it without padding.
The release window, for reference:
| Date | Platform |
|---|---|
| September 29, 2023 | Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5 |
| September 29, 2023 | Windows, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S |
What matters here, in order:
- The orb-as-world mechanic, which is genuinely new.
- The nesting structure, which rewards patience over speed.
- The ability unlocks, which turn each orb into a tool.
- The boss fights, which test the mechanic rather than the reflexes.
- The wordless stretches, which are the weakest part.
Cocoon is not a long game, and it does not pretend to be. It is a tight, confident puzzle adventure that respects the player’s attention. The wasteland opening is the one misstep — it asks for trust before it has earned any. Everything after it earns plenty.
8.9 of 10.
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