Astro Bot

Astro Bot is a 3D platformer in which the player controls a small robot, Astro Bot, with the DualSense controller. Astro's move set is identical to his previous incarnations from Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Astro's Playroom, maintaining his ability to jump, hover, punch, and spin-attack. The ability to swim underwater also makes a return from Astro Bot Rescue Mission, having been absent in Astro's Playroom.

The base game has 90 levels, split across six galaxies and 60 planets. Each galaxy contains progression levels (which must be beaten to access the boss stage) and challenge levels (which are optional and are typically higher in difficulty as a result). Upon completing enough progression levels and collecting the requisite number of Bots, the boss stage becomes unlocked, the completion of which leads to a level centered around a certain V.I.P. Bot. Upon the completion of that level, a new galaxy is unlocked.

Astro, the robot captain of a mothership resembling the PlayStation 5 console, and his crew of Bots are exploring space when a green alien named Space Bully Nebulax attacks them and rips out the mothership's CPU. An unconscious Astro and the mothership crash-land onto a desert planet while his crew and the mothership's core systems are scattered across the universe.

Astro is revived by his Dual Speeder, a smaller spaceship resembling the DualSense controller, and together they begin reactivating satellites and exploring galaxies to rescue the crew and rebuild the mothership. The crew helps Astro gain access to Nebulax's minions, whom he defeats and recovers mothership parts from - the system memory from Mighty Chewy the gorilla, the solid state drive from Wako Tako the octopus, the graphics processing unit from Lady Venomara the snake, the cooling fan from Mecha Leon the chameleon, and the ship covers from Falcon McFly the bird. Along the way, he rescues V.I.P. Bots (guest characters from other games) and explores planets based on Ape Escape, God of War, Uncharted, LocoRoco, and Horizon.

Development of Astro Bot started almost immediately after Astro's Playroom was completed, and took roughly three years with a development team of around 60 people. It is reportedly the largest game that Team Asobi has developed. Unlike its predecessors Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Astro's Playroom, Astro Bot was named without any subtitle succeeding it. Nicolas Doucet, the creative director and producer of Astro Bot, stated the reasoning behind this was to signify a new beginning for the Astro Bot series.

In an interview with Edge magazine, Doucet stated that he and Team Asobi considered giving the game an open world structure, but ultimately decided on focusing more on a level-based structure instead. He notes that the reason behind this decision was "because that was the one that gave us the most control over the game's variety." To make the game accessible for gamers of all skill levels, the difficulty of each of Astro Bot's levels were put into great consideration. The main levels were designed to be relatively easy, allowing anyone to beat the game regardless of their skill level.

Astro Bot received "universal acclaim" from critics, according to review aggregator website Metacritic, and 99% of critics recommended the game, according to OpenCritic. It was ranked the highest-rated game of 2024 on Metacritic and OpenCritic. In Japan, four critics from Famitsu gave the game a total score of 36 out of 40, with each critic awarding the game a 9 out of 10.

Simon Cardy of IGN compared Astro Bot to the likes of a theme park and Willy Wonka's Chocolate Factory, "throwing a new thrill at you around every corner and after every double-jumped gap [...] a delightful concoction of experimentation and joy." He also felt that it was the best utilization of the DualSense's haptic feedback and adaptive triggers since 2020's Astro's Playroom, describing it as if "some popping candy has smuggled its way into your controller [...] fizzes and pings away, sweetly reacting to whatever is happening on screen."