Astro Bot followers have all heard the story of the creation of the sponge power-up, however do you know developer Team Asobi additionally prototyped even wackier powers, like a espresso grinder and a roulette wheel?
We did not, till IGN attended GDC 2025, the place Team Asobi studio director Nicolas Doucet gave a chat merely titled, “The Making of ‘ASTRO BOT'”. In his discuss, Doucet went in-depth on the method of making the PlayStation mascot platformer, together with exhibiting off quite a few early prototype photos and lower content material.
Doucet started his discuss by speaking in regards to the preliminary pitch for Astro Bot, which was written in May 2021, just some months after Team Asobi started prototyping it. According to him, there have been 23 completely different revisions of the pitch earlier than it was proven to prime administration. Their pitch was apparently initially given as an lovely caricature exhibiting off the principle pillars and actions of the sport. Clearly, it was a hit.
Next, Doucet defined how the crew generated concepts. The reply, unshockingly, is numerous brainstorming, however what Team Asobi did was type small teams of 5-6 individuals that blend people from completely different disciplines collectively. Everyone wrote or drew concepts on particular person sticky notes, resulting in this totally unbelievable brainstorming board picture:
Not each concept made it to the following section, prototyping, Doucet stated. In reality, solely round 10% of their brainstorms truly received made. But that was nonetheless a lot of prototyping. Doucet went on to speak in regards to the significance of prototyping all types of issues, explaining that everybody on the crew was inspired to prototype concepts that they had. This included departments outdoors of sport design, such for example the place audio designers made a theater inside Astro Bot to prototype haptic controller vibrations that corresponded to completely different sound results, such because the other ways a door can open and shut.
Prototyping was so vital to the Astro Bot crew, Doucet stated, that a number of programmers on the crew have been reserved to prototype issues that had nothing to do with platforming. That’s the place Astro Bot’s sponge mechanic got here from – they prototyped a sponge that squeezed dry utilizing the adaptive set off, it was enjoyable, and it turned part of the sport.
Doucet shared the above picture, which included quite a few such prototypes that have been made, however by no means became Astro Bot mechanics, alongside people who did. You can see the balloon and sponge, which have been used, alongside prototypes of what appears to be like like a tennis sport, somewhat strolling wind-up toy, a roulette wheel, a espresso grinder, and several other extra.
Later within the discuss, Doucet additionally mentioned how ranges have been chosen and designed round sure mechanics. The purpose, he stated, was for each stage to have distinctive gameplay of some form and by no means really feel too just like one other stage. While that does not imply that Astro Bot might by no means use the identical power-up on a couple of stage, Doucet stated that the expression of it needed to be completely different sufficient every time to make the extent really feel distinctive. For occasion, he confirmed some photos of a lower stage themed round fowl flights that was lower resulting from reusing Astro Bot’s monkey power-up in ways in which have been a bit too just like the extent Go-Go Archipelago, in addition to one other stage in Astro’s Playroom that had the same energy.
“In the top, it was determined that the overlap was not wholesome sufficient to create selection, and we simply lower this stage solely,” he stated. “We’ll by no means know if that stage would have been well-liked. But in hindsight, I feel it is a good factor that we received to spend that point elsewhere.”
Finally Doucet closed the discuss by speaking in regards to the sport’s last scene, and sure, that is Spoilers if you have not completed Astro Bot but. Read on at your individual threat.
In the ultimate scene of Astro Bot, the participant reassembles a damaged Astro Bot utilizing limbs and help from the opposite gathered bots. According to Doucet, initially the participant was simply handed a totally dismembered Astro. No head, no limbs, simply the torso. But Doucet stated that this made some individuals “actually upset”, in order that they went with the marginally extra intact model we see within the present sport.
Doucet’s discuss included quite a few different attention-grabbing nuggets and tidbits in regards to the growth of Astro Bot. We’ve spoken to him previously a number of instances in regards to the growth of Astro Bot, a sport that we gave a 9/10 in our evaluation, calling it “A fantastically ingenious platformer in its personal proper, Astro Bot is especially particular for anybody with a spot of their coronary heart for PlayStation.”
Rebekah Valentine is a senior reporter for IGN. You can discover her posting on BlueSky @duckvalentine.bsky.social. Got a narrative tip? Send it to rvalentine@ign.com.
