Cocoon Review – Molecular Mystification

In recent years the abstract environment puzzle game became its own sub-genre. While some tell strange stories, others are so opaque and hard to understand that players can assign almost any meanings to their actions. Cocoon is at the other end of this spectrum. I basically never had any idea why I was doing what I was doing or what the larger goal was, but I didn’t mind for a moment because the puzzles scratch your brain so effectively that I was always eager to complete whatever strange task it put in front of me.

Cocoon has you as an eagle-eyed bug creature, with limited flight capabilities. Your job is to move globes that look like marbles. The world looks and feels amazing, as does the experience of moving your protagonist. You don’t jump or attack enemies. Each interaction can be controlled by a single button. You can focus fully on your puzzles and other tasks due to the fluidity of motion and simplicity of interaction.

Cocoon revolves around the globes that you can grab and move. To progress through the game, you must jump between the worlds contained within each globe. Orange globes, for instance, make certain paths visible, while green globes allow you to move up or down specific platforms. Puzzles are solved by figuring out where to place the globes. Cocoon impressively manages this potentially brain-breaking puzzle mechanic without ever getting too complicated and making you feel like you’re climbing deeper and deeper into an ever-shrinking series of worlds.

This process can be frustrating because it often involves knowing how to place your globes, and then carrying each one to its destination. It never becomes boring, but I have felt like I am just going through the motions to complete a puzzle, rather than arriving at an epiphany.

Despite the abstract art direction, which pushes you through a series of strange, seemingly organic structures, I never found myself in a position where I wasn’t sure which direction I needed to go. You can get direction from the environment or a floating key. I always felt like I was making progress and never banging my head against a puzzle I didn’t understand.

Few boss fights are interspersed with the solving of puzzles, and they were always something I was looking forward to. This is when the gameplay most closely resembles an action video game. You’re not so much attacking an enemy in the traditional sense but rather making sure to be in the right position until they are defeated. The challenge and the breakdown of how to defeat each boss was a great experience.

Perhaps Cocoon’s biggest triumph is its pace and how well it hands out new globe-based abilities all the way up to the end. The game excels at making you an expert on how to use a specific ability to solve a puzzle and then continue to use that ability in tandem with the new ones you’ve discovered. Cocoon’s restraint is rewarded for its commitment to creating an improved puzzle game. I don’t know that I will ever fully understand what transpired during my molecular journey on Cocoon’s alien world, but its imagery and puzzles will stay with me for some time.