Cocoon

Apparently I will enjoy anything that Jeppe Carlsen touches. His most famous co-creations, Limbo and Inside, are puzzle-platforming classics, and his rhythm-action game 140 is one of my favourite hidden gems. Cocoon is directly descended from the Playdead titles, being an atmospheric and ambiguous puzzle game with striking imagery but minimal plot, an unfathomable setting, and audio that blurs the line between music and sound effect. The difference is that those games were fairly mechanically pedestrian, while Cocoon features one of the most original puzzle-solving mechanics in years. Specifically, your primary tools are spheres that each grant a unique ability while carried…and also happen to contain an entire world that you can hop into and out of at set locations, bringing additional world spheres with you. For a while, it doesn’t seem to be using this to its full potential, only to start doing so in the final third and suddenly become very confusing, so ultimately I think the initial restraint was correctly calculated.

Artistically, Cocoon is best described as reality-adjacent. All of its characters, locations, and structures have some kind of basis in our universe but are otherwise unique to the game’s. In a level that calls for an extendible bridge, most games would use a metal one, but Cocoon uses the body of a biomechanical alien vaguely resembling a millipede instead. As a showcase of pure creativity, it’s terrific, but the true genius of it is that it all makes sense. The majority of the game is quite easy, but it’s not because the puzzles have obvious solutions. It’s because the art design is so intuitive that you just know how to manipulate these alien environments by unexplainable instinct.

On the other hand, the lack of familiarity creates inevitable emotional distance between the player and the narrative. I won’t lie: I don’t know what Cocoon is about. I have tenuous theories for some of it, but the full meaning is lost on me. And that’s fine; there’s value in art that provides a mold for the audience to pour their thoughts into, but it runs the risk of leaving gaps in the experience where no interpretation solidifies. Additionally, Cocoon’s fascinating brand of visual storytelling slips into cliched “artsy” symbolism in the finale, and what I would tentatively call its plot twists will probably be very predictable, given its core mechanic. Most of this could be said of Carlsen’s previous games as well, and it only slightly detracts from the experience in all cases. For the most part, Cocoon is a uniquely meditative journey with a brilliant gameplay hook.