Sony Interactive Entertainment and Team Asobi’s 3D platformer, Astro Bot, features only 12.5 minutes of cutscenes, according to the game’s director.
During The Making of ‘Astro Bot’ presentation at GDC 2025 (via), director Nicolas Doucet talked about the game’s design philosophy and creation process. The project was internally pitched in May, 2021. At that time, prototype development had already begun, but it was mentioned that 23 revisions were made before the pitch presentation for proposing the game plan reached top management at Sony Interactive Entertainment.
Four Pillars of Astro Bot’s Core Values
Four key pillars were laid out that clearly defined the pitch for Astro Bot in terms of its core concepts and values. The first pillar is ‘Crafted Gameplay’, which embodied the idea of the game being thoroughly polished to the point that every one-second action feels fun. The second pillar is ‘Techno Magic’, which aimed to deliver a “magical” experience using PS5 technology, including physics and haptics. The third pillar, ‘PlayStation Fiesta’, signifies the idea of celebrating the history and characters of the PlayStation brand. Lastly, ‘Overflowing Charm’ involves the use of art, animation, music, etc, to elicit a smile.
Gameplay Mechanics & Level Design
Around one-third of Astro Bot’s development period was taken up by the prototyping phase. During this stage, Team Asobi purely pursues whether the idea is fun. It involves a lot of trial-and-error, until the gameplay is firmly established. Each of the game’s levels were designed with the aim of being unique from one another. The development team followed a simple rule, whereby mechanics could not be repeated across levels. In addition, elements that were considered too functional were cut out.
Cutscene Length
One of the presentation slides revealed that Astro Bot features a total of just 12.5 minutes of cutscenes, with a vast majority of the game (98% to be exact) keeping players in control.
Astro Bot is available exclusively for the PS5. PS5 Pro support was added via a recent update.
