Astro’s Playroom is a game celebrating the world and heritage of PlayStation by giving you the opportunity to explore a literal “world” inside the futuristic looking PlayStation 5 (PS5). Being a showpiece of both past and future, it is currently a free tie-in pre-installed every new PS5. But, um… I only really know one PlayStation related franchise: the racing series Gran Turismo. Is this celebration fun or worthwhile to someone with little or no nostalgia or attachment to its legacy? Is this game a competent 3D platform without preaching to the choir? Yes, because it familiarizes you with the new controller and still has an interesting world to explore, albeit sometimes wishing that the game volunteered just a little more context. 

Name	Astro’s Playroom
Genre	Action, Platformer
Platform	PlayStation 5 (Exclusive)
ESRB	Everyone 10+
Release Year	2020
Developer	Team Asobi
Publisher	Sony Interactive Entertainment
Country	Japan
Website	Official Site

First and foremost, and the game makes it very clear itself, Astro’s Playroom is designed to weave players into the DualSense controller, and familiarizing players with all its features in a coherent package. In that sense, this game is really helpful for people whom have never played non-mobile video games or have not done so in the last twenty years. People familiar with Team Asobi¹, might recognize them as the developers of Astro Bot: Rescue Mission, a showpiece for PlayStation VR. Their main value appears to be demonstrating why PlayStation is innovative, rather than iterative.

The game is comprised of four worlds (with four tightly integrated levels) that can be played in any order to unlock a final stage, for a total of seventeen courses. Each level is themed around a piece of hardware inside a PS5 and one of the four prior iterations, with the end goal being to collect all five first model PlayStations. 

The courses themselves are not too long nor difficult if one simply wants to beat them expediently, as the main challenge and side goal is to try to explore your surroundings, take more challenging side-paths, or generally go off the the beaten path to discover puzzle pieces and additional “artifacts” (i.e. console variations, accessories, etc.). There is no penalty or lives lost if you make a mistake, probably as it would feel demotivating making mistakes while trying to learn the basics of utilizing the controller’s features. The motivation to keep playing and challenging yourself stems from the artifacts and collecting enough coins to outright buy the remaining collectables at Labo.

Labo is the gallery where you see the mural being built and can interact with the artifacts you collected or bought. You buy access to additional puzzle pieces, artifacts, or new residents that interact in Labo (making it feel more alive as you progress through the game. Although you have to spend your coins on a gacha machine, there are not many useless duds that make you feel that the game is unfairly rigged against you. The gacha machine at worst seems to only remove the player’s ability to choose the order in that they earn prizes, logical since it would keep the surprise of what are the items.

What is strange is the fact that you can still collect coins, even after the gacha machine is no longer-usable. You end up collecting coins for no reason, besides habit. It feels like wasted space that could have added something small, fun to play around with, or easier. Possible examples could be temporarily change the color of Astro, briefly make him faster or jump higher, or maybe a homing device (using the rumble) that makes it easier to find the pieces/artifacts that might be somewhat difficult to find for people who never play platformers. 

As you beat levels, you unlock challenges where the objective is to reach the goal as fast as possible. After you beat the challenge once, you can keep repeating it to improve your time. And the game quickly restarts the course if you make a mistake. A leaderboard is available for more competitive players. I like how the levels are easy enough to be accessible, yet challenging enough to keep the more experienced engaged. Courses are short enough to retry areas where people might struggle, and it lacks collectables, making perfection only something for the enthused.

My own other frustration with this game is that I wish that some of the artifacts where better contextualized within the game. For example, it would have been interesting to learn more about famous, worthwhile games that used certain accessories. Otherwise, some of the artifacts feel either too specific to know what kind of game it was used in² or too mundane³ to find games that where actually worth seeking out today.

Nevertheless, this game is worth one’s time, especially if one enjoys platformer or has not played video games in a significant amount of time. The levels are dense, the computerized world is both interesting and endearing, and the mechanics effectively use the features of the DualSense. Also, this game is currently free or built-in to new PlayStation 5s, and is short enough to try and know whether or nor you find this genre of game enjoyable. You might dislike this game if you like difficult games, dislike “gimmicky” controls, or never liked platformers of any type. Regardless, this game is likely worth trying out if you just want to quickly test the features of the DualSense controller.   

Score	8/10
Score Relative to Metacritic	85/100
Difficulty/Approachability	2/10

Footnotes

1. According to Google Translate, “Asobi” seems to be a transliteration of “遊び,” itself translating to Play. Team Play is clear, feels neat, and welcoming!
2. Examples of accessories are niche enough to justify additional context are the Buzz Controller and PocketStation.
3. Examples of accessories that are too mundane to understand why they were interesting in the past are the microphone and camera accessories.