Cocoon Review

ign.com:

Without a single word, Cocoon takes a small, cicada-like creature on an exciting journey through the cosmos using only a thumbstick and a single button. That setup should sound exceedingly familiar for fans of gameplay designer Jeppe Carlsen's previous work, Limbo and Inside. But here, Cocoon differentiates itself from those monumentally creepy side-scrolling adventures as a 3D puzzle-platformer, and the additional dimension provides a refreshing amount of, well, depth to its challenging and intriguing puzzles. These puzzles build on each other in smart ways, keeping fundamental mechanics from the desert at the very start integrated and important all the way to the end. And even as Cocoon gets more and more complex, its minimalist controls make sure it never feels overwhelming.

It’s not long before your cicada is unexpectedly whisked out of that barren starting area and into a harsh mechanical one, and it’s there you find your first orb – a mysterious orange sphere that somehow contains that entire previous desert world inside of it.

You can pick this world up and carry it around, using it to power platforms, lifts, and other machines that impede your progress. Solving these puzzles as you swap between worlds is a wonderful time; seeing how each piece of the puzzle interacts with others and figuring out the layers between them is some of the most mesmerizing and engaging stuff I've seen in a while.

And it’s dazzlingly beautiful. While Limbo and Inside both stuck with a simpler, more monochromatic tone, Cocoon breaks out of that mold with vibrant, curated color palettes. Each world has its own distinct color and vibe, from the warm sands of its first orange orb-world to the squishy and alien textures of the purple one later