2023's Most Enchanting Moment: Exploring Cocoon's Culmination of Spheres

Cocoon is a challenging game to describe without witnessing its gameplay. Created by the mind behind puzzle classics Limbo and Inside, it showcases a high level of creativity and difficulty. The game subtly guides players towards solutions without being too explicit, allowing them to feel accomplished and rewarded. The central concept of the game involves using various orbs, each containing a unique world that players can enter and exit at will. Each world presents its own themed puzzles. Upon leaving a world, players can carry its respective orb and use its abilities to navigate the larger world. As players progress, the game introduces more worlds, increasing the complexity of the gameplay.

Additionally, each world in Cocoon has its own theme and unique ability that is unlocked after defeating its boss. For example, the first orange-tinged world features puzzles based on invisible platforms. After defeating the boss, this power extends to the larger world, allowing players to traverse previously invisible pathways while carrying the specific world on their back. Later on, another world grants the ability to alter the state of water-based columns, transforming them from solid blocks to liquid, allowing players to reach new areas.

This power blurs the thin line between what exists in one world and what exists in all others. Toggling this state within the world can alter the state of the columns both inside and outside it, challenging you to utilize it correctly in one world to affect the overworld outside. Cocoon also introduces concepts of recursion, allowing you to enter ethereal areas in the overworld that loop back into the sphere you might be carrying on your back, essentially letting you duplicate them to solve particular puzzles.

These lightbulb moments lead to Cocoon's final third, where it stretches its established rules and asks you to put them all together. At this point, you're in control of numerous different spheres that you have to routinely juggle between to progress through the overworld. Up until then, they have been distinct from one another, but with the game's final ability, it becomes easy to collapse the shared logic between them all to solve a problem. It starts with a switch that is activated by shooting it in the overworld, which activates a platform but needs to be reactivated later on without a second shot.

It may take some time, but you will soon realize that a single shot can be propelled upwards through a series of spheres, allowing you to shoot it at the deepest level in a specific direction to take advantage of reflective surfaces at higher levels as the projectile uses portals to travel upward. This realization is mesmerizing, not only because it initially seems highly unlikely to work, but also because it aligns perfectly with logical assumptions. The way time is stretched based on the depth of the sphere you are currently in immediately reveals that this solution can be used for more time-sensitive puzzles, which become common shortly after this discovery.

It's not that Cocoon surprises with this shift late in the game, but rather that the potential is subtly hinted at throughout, maintaining the moment's splendor. There's always a suggestion that these worlds are interconnected in ways not immediately apparent, especially when you encounter areas early on that seem to have an immediate purpose for your current goal. Returning to these places and finally understanding their significance ties each small world together and gives each detail a sense of importance, making previous observations feel purposeful and rewarding. The way Cocoon consistently utilizes this combination of spheres is difficult to explain and is best experienced firsthand, but each instance left me in awe, amazed that Cocoon had the depth to make seemingly complex solutions possible within its tightly designed parameters.

Cocoon effortlessly strikes a balance between challenging puzzles and player satisfaction. It offers a unique and continually expanding set of rules, all while maintaining a confident and satisfying gameplay experience. While there may be bigger moments in gaming, the joy of solving a puzzle in Cocoon is truly unforgettable.

Editor's P/S

As a hard fan of puzzle games, I was eagerly anticipating the release of Cocoon, and it did not disappoint. The game's unique concept of using orbs to enter and exit different worlds, each with its own themed puzzles, was incredibly creative and engaging. The puzzles were challenging but fair, and the sense of accomplishment upon solving them was incredibly rewarding. The game's difficulty curve was well-paced, with the puzzles gradually increasing in complexity as the player progressed.

One of the things I particularly enjoyed about Cocoon was the way it subtly hinted at the potential for interconnectedness between the different worlds. This was especially evident in areas that seemed to have an immediate purpose for the player's current goal, but whose true significance was only revealed later in the game. Returning to these places and finally understanding their significance tied each small world together and gave each detail a sense of importance, making previous observations feel purposeful and rewarding. The way Cocoon consistently utilized this combination of spheres was truly awe-inspiring, and I was amazed at the depth and complexity of the solutions that were possible within the game's tightly designed parameters.