Cocoon

Worlds sit within worlds in this properly magical puzzle adventure.

Cocoon is an exceptionally crafted, perfectly paced and highly polished experience that hits every beat. It's gaming perfection.

Cocoon is an approachable, clever, and consistently satisfying puzzle game that respects your intelligence and never leaves you stranded. If you have Xbox Game Pass, it’s an essential title that’s worth experiencing.

Mechanics and narratives thought too bold and bright for some have been transformed into mere child's play by Geometric Interactive in a strong contender for the title of the best indie title of the entire year, and the team has proven that Carlsen's strokes of brilliance in INSIDE and LIMBO were far from flukes.

Cocoon makes incredible meals of puzzles within worlds that could have adorned prog rock album covers.

Jeppe Carlsen, best known as the lead designer for previous puzzler games Limbo and Inside, is back again with Cocoon, developed with Geometric Interactive. Cocoon can be best categorized as part puzzler, part adventure, part platformer and part exploration game. If you have ever played the iconic puzzle-adventure game, Journey, you will feel right at home from the opening screen. Like Journey, Cocoon eschews any sort of narration. The story and gameplay unfold as you explore the surrounding area. Everything is a mystery waiting for you to explore.

When I watched Men in Black (1997) for the first time as a child, I was struck by the final punchline of the movie. We see the country, then the planet, then the galaxy, eventually revealing that our entire universe is inside a marble that some alien is playing games with. It’s an idea as simple as it is clever, and one that I kind of love. Many years later, the Rick and Morty (2013-) episode The Ricks Must Be Crazy (2015) releases and plays with a similar concept, although in reverse. In it, Rick reveals that inside the battery running his car is a whole universe of people creating energy for...

The nature of Cocoon means this isn’t going to be a game for everyone. Some players will need narrative, will need dialogue or character motivations to hook them into an experience. There’s nothing wrong with that, really, but if that is you, you’re missing out on a treat here. Cocoon is both simple and infinitely complex; it presents a beautiful, visceral world that requires no explanation. Thrown into it without even the slightest hint of an introduction, it’s your own curious mind that will carry you through this interwoven web of puzzles, and solving each one is an enriching experience tha...

Masterful geography makes this world-hopping puzzler not only a series of clever problems, but a grand exploration of a wonderfully realised cosmic universe.

Outside of that, though, Cocoon is an exceptional puzzle game that stands right alongside some of the greats in the genre. It has incredible art design and presentation, is so cleverly designed, and has a pace that makes it hard to put down once things get going. The surface-level view of the game is unassuming but digging into the worlds of Cocoon reveals an experience that is unforgettable.

“Cocoon is a mesmerizing debut for Geometric Interactive that's filled with ingenious puzzles that will unlock your animal instincts.”

What impressed me the most about Cocoon throughout much of the adventure was the sheer intuitive nature of its puzzle-solving. You might think that with no dialogue or hints, jumping into worlds within worlds and carrying them around would be hard to wrap your head around, but this game does an incredible job in its presentation, making you aware of what you can do and what you want to accomplish. Just as well, it’s a beautiful and ambient game that drew me into its mystery and made me want to unravel more through the sheer joy of cracking each layer and digging into another. The team at Geome...