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Nicolas Doucet, president of Team Asobi and game director of PlayStation darling Astro Bot, has come forward to speak on the game’s massive success, attributing it to its AA-sized ambition and scale as a learning lesson to other developers.
Speaking on the game’s development journey at the Game Developer Conference (GDC) in San Fransisco, to which it also won Best Audio and Best Technology at the event’s awards, Doucet discussed Astro Bot’s smaller scope, how it originally had a more upsetting ending and why the cameo bots in the game were not given detailed descriptions nor proper names.
“From the start, we were in the mindset that it’s OK to make a compact game, and I think it’s really important – especially going into this year – it’s OK to make a small game,” Doucet explained, “A lot of choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled as AA… like the size of the team, the size of the game, there’s no voice, it’s not open world, but that doesn’t really matter. We could still make something that gets people really happy.”
These choices extend to cutting out more open levels in favour of tightly crafted ones, allowing the team to fine-tune the game’s rhythm, with every element in a level such as platforms, enemies and bots all designed in a way that maintains a fast-paced tempo and keep players engaged. This smaller scope also allowed the team to focus on polishing and adding finer details such as animating objects in the environment to react to a player’s movements, or the many photo spots spread across levels. “These touches really made a big difference to the game,” Doucet described, “When you have hundreds of them, suddenly your game is transformed.”
Doucet also spoke on the game’s ending and how it was originally presented in a more upsetting manner. At the end of the story (SPOILER WARNING), Astro sacrifices himself to save the team, leading to an emotional moment where he gets rebuilt. “The first version of this prototype included a completely dismembered Astro, so you gain the torso without the head. That meant some people were really upset in the team – and for good reasons,” explained Doucet, adding that after many “emotional conversations”, the team opted for a “lighter approach” with a similar scene except Astro’s head is always on his body.
Lastly, Doucet touched on the naming convention of the various cameo bots Astro rescues along the way, explaining that the team agreed that providing a detailed description of these characters and calling them by their real name would be “too formal” and thus opted for a more playful naming style to let players guess the identity of the characters on their own. “It was almost like a little game we were playing with the fans,” Doucet said, “and in doing so, we were able to keep a lighthearted tone, which also fit the younger audience.”
There’s no denying the success of Astro Bot despite its apparent AA scale, as not only did the game clinch four awards at The Game Awards 2024, but it was also a critical and commercial success, even receiving new content post-launch such as new levels and bots, making it a real-world example of the phrase “quality over quantity”.
Kevin is a reformed PC Master Race gamer with a penchant for franchise “duds” like Darksiders III and Dead Space 3. He has made it his life-long mission to play every single major game release – lest his wallet dies trying.
Yonk
