However, two of these levels are based on dormant Sony franchises and if you can avoid having it spoiled for you what they are beforehand, they’re amongst the highlights of the game. They both replicate the mechanics, and audio, of the original games exactly and are an absolute joy, that will instantly have you wishing that they’d get full-blown sequels on the PlayStation 5. Since what you’re actually after is the stolen pieces of the PlayStation 5 there’s always an extra level after each of the main bosses that is inspired by a first party Sony game. You can probably imagine what these are already, with the God Of War one giving you Kratos’ ice axe and the Uncharted one having Nate shooting what looks like foam balls at enemies.

We’ll have more information to share soon, so be on the lookout for future updates. It has been a real delight to continue offering you, our valued fans, an extended Astro Bot experience at no additional cost. Free from the now-standard PlayStation Studios themes of threatening apocalypses, familial woe, and coming-of-age pains, Astro Bot is all about following a cheery little metal bloke around on his adventures.

The fact that Team Asobi’s games have the potential to become someone’s first game is something that Doucet takes seriously. “Team Asobi’s studio is just across the street from our building, so they were always the first to prototype with our hardware,” says Senior Principal Product Manager Toshi Aoki, product director for the DualSense controller. It could be said that the combination of futurism with cuteness perfectly embodies the identity of the Japanese roots of the PlayStation brand that Kutaragi started.

Some are on the linear side, testing your platforming skills, but others are more open, giving you some freedom as to how to achieve your goal. You might find yourself equipped with gloves that allow you to pummel enemies at range, for example, or a bulldog strapped to your back with which you can charge into heavy items and send them flying. As previously mentioned, anyone that has played Astro’s Playroom will have a good idea of what to expect here.

I won’t spoil them, but they all achieve a surprisingly deep synthesis of their inspiration (often a more mature-styled game) with Astro Bot’s tactile world, adorable characters, and toothsome gameplay. It’s a mark of how confident the game is that its personality shines so clearly through the costumes it dons. This tribute is never more touching and joyful than in the case of Ape Escape. [newline]This Japan Studio series, about a boy who catches naughty monkeys in his net, is one of many faltering attempts by Sony to create a family game franchise to rival Nintendo’s, and like most of them, it didn’t really stick. Astro Bot is very much its inheritor, even down to the hardware connection — the first Ape Escape was intended as a showpiece for the original DualShock analog controller. After defeating the first galaxy’s end boss in Astro Bot, a level is unlocked that fully and faithfully recreates Ape Escape’s anarchic chase gameplay within Astro Bot’s world. It’s a wonderful touch; for one level, a near-forgotten series is brought back to glorious life in a modern context, and Team Asobi honors the memory of the ceaselessly inventive studio it used to call home.

Master The Adventure

Super Mario Bros. was a formative gaming experience that changed my life. Astro Bot is beautiful, and not just in a cartoony kind of way. Its landscapes are sharp and alive with interactive details, and it seems like every pixel has been polished to perfection. All I hope now is that Team Asobo is given quite literally anything it wants to make its next game because I’m already there for it.

Final Thoughts & Review Score

This became The Playroom, Team Asobi’s first game.The Playroom came preloaded with the PS4 when it launched back in 2013 and functioned as a showcase of what the PlayStation Camera and DualShock 4 controller could do. One of the mini games featured was AR Bots, a tech demo-like experience that made it seem as if 40 little robots were inside the DualShock 4. By swiping the touchpad you could throw them into the room and interact with them through the PlayStation Camera in AR, before sucking them back into the controller. It really feels like the developers thought of everything, and thanks to their efforts, Astro Bot is pure joy in video game form. I went into it with high expectations thanks to Astro Bot Rescue Mission and Astro’s Playroom, and it not only met my expectations, but completely exceeded them.

Going back to the hub, where all your collected bots congregate, it slowly opens up to reveal new areas to explore and more features to enjoy. Puzzle Pieces are another collectible to gather, and they unlock new rooms, with one of them being the returning Gatcha Lab. The prizes you get here, earned by spending the coins you’ve collected, more often than not, are attributed to one of the bots you’ve found, like a specific weapon or object that gives them a fun interaction in the hub. Other prizes include cosmetics for Astro himself and his Dual Speeder, letting you customise his look with some iconic outfits. You can also unlock the Safari Park, a special zone to hang out in, but it also gives you access to a simple Photo Mode, then usable throughout the game.

Originally announced during Sony’s June 2025 State of Play, the update adds a new galaxy, the Vicious Void, for players to explore. Four of the levels are titled Twin-Frog Trouble, Suck It Up, Handhold Havoc, High Inflation, with Team Asobi keeping the name of the fifth as a surprise. The addition of the new levels brings Astro Bot’s total level count to over 90. “A must-play for anyone who loves creative platformers. n188 are beautifully crafted.” Astro Bot[a] is a series[1] of augmented reality and platform games developed by Team Asobi, originally a group within Japan Studio, and published by Sony Interactive Entertainment.

There are a few things we need to cover to understand the online reaction to Astro Bot. The first is the role that video games play in many people’s lives. The game features more than 50 diverse planets spread across six themed galaxies, each offering unique challenges and environments to explore. The crash site hub world has its own areas to explore and is packed full of quirks, such as eventually letting you customise your ship and outfit. The gacha machine mechanic makes a particularly enjoyable return, providing a satisfying way to spend the thousands of coins you’ll collect. It’s not brand-new for the series at this point, but still hits all the right spots.

I never lose my momentum because of a mistimed jump and can usually recover if I misjudge a spinning platform’s trajectory. In addition to a punch and spin attack, the jets from my boosters can fry enemies below me. That means that I rarely need to stop moving to take care of a few pesky bots.

Astro Bot embraces that by turning each of its levels into playgrounds that give players plenty of space to poke around in the name of fun. With the basics on lock, Team Asobi lets players focus on Astro Bot’s wildly inventive level design. In one level, I get a power-up that lets me shrink Astro down to the size of an ant on command. That leads me through a fantastic puzzle-platformer gauntlet where I need to shrink down to climb into a lock or hop up a tree’s leaves. Another level drops me in a casino and puts a time-slowing PSVR on Astro’s head. I use that ability to freeze a giant slot machine as it rains down chips, turning them into platforms.

But when they do, you are driven to continue Astro’s journey in hopes you’ll run across another like it. Team Asobi has created a game that not only celebrates the history of PlayStation, but also the very existence of the fans. Astro Bot is a platformer that, despite always following the same thread, manages to constantly surprise the player and awaken a multitude of different emotions. The game even features some collectibles that are locked behind blowing into the mic on the controller, an act that is not compatible with the PlayStation Access controller.