CocoonWe're diving into Cocoon, a game that grabs your brain, twists it into an origami crane, and leaves you questioning which dimension you're even standing in. First off, the visuals – wow. It's like walking through an alien’s dreamscape where architecture doesn't care about gravity and everything is wrapped in this eerie yet oddly beautiful haze of bioluminescence. It's as if H. R. Giger and M.C. Escher got together for a friendly game of puzzle-making and decided, "Yeah, let's just make people question reality."
You play as… something. Honestly, what even are you? Some kind of beetle-slash-cyborg creature? The game doesn’t care about names or titles. You’re a globular entity with legs, and your main job is to solve puzzles by leaping in and out of realms contained in glowing spheres. Yes, that’s right – you literally carry worlds on your back like an intergalactic turtle, hopping between them like it’s no big deal.
Gameplay? It’s all about multi-layered puzzles that make you feel simultaneously like a genius and a total dingus. You’ll be traversing worlds within worlds, and then using the worlds themselves as puzzle-solving tools. Did that sentence make your brain hurt? Good. Because that’s how you’ll feel during your time here.
The puzzles are elegant in that they never overwhelm you with instructions. It's all silent learning, encouraging you to think, "Oh, that ball of light is a portal and a key and a reality-shifter… cool." The best part? It’s smooth. You’ll slide from one challenge to the next without jarring transitions or hand-holding, but also without feeling lost – at least, not in a frustrating way. More like a, “What the hell am I doing, but I think I’m on the right track?” sort of way.
Then, the bosses. Yeah, I wasn’t expecting bosses in a puzzle game, either, but here we are. Imagine fighting creatures that are part geometric nightmare, part techno-organic abomination. They’re not just there to smack you around; the bosses demand you use your newly acquired puzzle-solving skills to beat them, like turning their own arenas into a battlefield where YOU control the rules.
The atmosphere is otherworldly and drips with ambiance. The sound design is a perfect companion to the weirdness that is Cocoon. Whether it’s the hum of machinery, the chirping of alien wildlife, or the strange, hypnotic music, the game drags you into its strange ecosystem and doesn’t let go.
And let’s talk about the narrative – or rather, the feeling of a narrative. There’s no dialogue, no text dumps explaining what you're doing or why you're hopping between pocket universes. But the game doesn’t need them. The way it weaves its visual storytelling leaves room for your imagination to run wild. By the end, you’ll have spun your own little tale about what the heck is going on.
In short, Cocoon is a mind-bending, reality-warping, beautifully bizarre journey through puzzles that’ll make you question the fabric of space and time… and maybe leave you questioning yourself too.
If you love puzzle games that respect your intelligence but also make you feel like you're stuck in a fever dream, Cocoon is your new best friend.
4.0