Team Asobi, the developer behind Sony Interactive Entertainment’s upcoming 3D platformer, Astro Bot, has revealed the game’s length.
During an interview with Julien Chièze on his YouTube channel, Team Asobi Studio Director Nicolas Doucet shared that the length of the main missions in the upcoming Astro Bot will be around 12 to 15 hours. He mentioned that at no point during the game’s production did the development team stop and think to themselves about it needing to have a duration of 20 to 30 hours. Instead, they wanted to make a well-paced and consistent game, where each level has the same degree of quality rather than having padded content.
Doucet mentioned that Team Asobi preferred to shorten the length of Astro Bot rather than create a sense of repetition. For the open world concept, they didn’t develop a prototype but simply brainstormed among themselves. When asked about a PlayStation-themed planet, he avoided answering to prevent overhyping and spoiling anything beforehand.
The development team contains a smaller team called DualSense 2.0, which consisting of around 4 people dedicated to coming up with new ideas for using the DualSense controller. The game features walls that Astro can interact with, and they transition from smooth to rough and then back to smooth surfaces, which is conveyed to the player via haptic feedback. There are secret passages behind rough sections for players to discover.
Regarding PSVR2 compatibility, Doucet stated that Astro Bot cannot be a hybrid game because it would be mediocre in VR as a result. He remained firm that a good VR game requires a design fully dedicated to the platform, as is the case with Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. When asked if future PlayStation hardware will be represented in Astro Bot via an update, as with the recent update for Astro’s Playroom, he confirmed that this would indeed be the case.
In another interview, in response to a question regarding the utilization of the PS5’s hardware capabilities, Doucet mentioned that, for Team Asobi, maintaining 60 fps is an absolute must. He didn’t want the game to ever drop below 60. He said that this is more important than resolution, graphics, or anything else. As such, the development team focused on the feel-good aspect when jumping and running in-game, protecting the tempo and melody perfectly. He also pointed out that the physics, especially with interactive elements, require a lot of power, and that these elements are crucial for gameplay.
