One of the best things about the flagship Super Mario games—the likes of Galaxy, Galaxy 2, and Odyssey—is the incessant inventiveness. So often they’ll feature a level that makes you exclaim, “That could have been the basis for a whole game!” So it is with full understanding of the gravity of the claim I’m making when I say that Astro Bot, Sony’s wonderful new 3D platformer, has a level that could have been the basis for a whole Mario game.
Team Asobi—an internal development team within Sony—was already demonstrably one of the most inventive developers you could wish for. Astro’s Playroom, the free game that comes with the PS5, proved this beyond any doubt. At the time, when reflecting on how it had made me feel nostalgic for a console that played no significant part in my past, I wrote, “I desperately wish for Sony’s Asobi Team to be freed of creating promotional minis and set loose on a full-length game.” My wish came true, and I—and everyone else—am utterly bowled away by the sheer magnificence of what has been created.
But one moment stuck out from an already outstanding game: a level titled Downsize Surprise. It appears in the second galaxy of the game, the Tentacle System, and features a gimmick that—while glimpsed elsewhere in the game—is primarily used for this single level. You shrink and grow.
This is by no means an original idea. Games have been built around the conceit of shrinking and growing since games were a thing, entire Zelda games have been built around it, and it has of course been a core conceit of so many 2D Mario games that it might seem farcical to highlight here as something so very special. But highlight it I’m gonna, and if you’ve played the Astro Bot level, you’ll know why.
Each Astro Bot level introduces a unique mechanic that exists just to delight you within that brief section of the game. Perhaps you’ll get a monkey friend who can climb walls and lift heavy objects with his giant hands. Or it might be froggy gloves that give you an uber-punch. Another time it could be an elephant backpack that can suck up liquid and then spawn platforms in midair. And in Downsize Surprise, it’s a mouse suit that lets you shrink down all teeny.
Thing is, in any other platform game that did this, you’d just shrink down for the level and then explore things in your miniature mode. But in Astro Bot’s level, the entire thing can be played at either size, requiring a combination of the two to complete, and you can switch form at any time you like.
It’s hard to overstate how complex that is from a level design perspective. Ordinarily, such a gimmick would allow the player to step through a portal, or trigger a change, at predetermined points. To let me, buffoon that I am, just hammer the size change button as often as I want to see what happens—that’s phenomenal. And to make it even better, the transformation feels utterly magical.
Like in those excellent scenes in the Ant-Man movies when Scott Lang has got the hang of the suit, hitting the button in mid-action and shrinking or growing accordingly never gets old. That flowerbed you were just stomping over is now an obstacle course of leaves and petals to explore. The little wooden trunk you stepped on is now a tunnel you can run through with pick-ups to collect. And then, because you can’t resist the idea, you press the grow button while you’re in the tunnel, and—YES!—it bursts apart and reveals even more goodies to pick up.
You use the ability in a few other ways I don’t want to mention, because finding them is so much of the joy. I’m more here today to celebrate the absolute beauty of how it’s delivered.
There’s no question at all that Astro Bot leaves this mechanic under-explored. It’s no wonder, given that moments later you’re in Go Go Archipelago with a robo-monkey helping you throw stones at baddies and climb banana-grips up walls to reach twirly-whirly bars that fling you into the sky. If anything, the nonchalance with which Team Asobi utilizes a shrink/grow mechanic better than any game before it is all the more astonishing. “Yeah, we’ve perfected that, but we’re busy and have a great idea about balloons…”
Which brings me back to my provocative opening thesis. Nintendo, you’re being called out here.
Obviously there’s a new 3D Mario in development, perhaps intended to be released as a launch title for the Switch’s follow-up console next March. It’s been an astonishing seven years since Odyssey was released, and over three years since the prototype for a glorious open-world future, Bowser’s Fury, was tucked in with the Switch release of Super Mario 3D World. So it’s probably too late for me to use my considerable influence to command Nintendo over what to include in the next 3D entry. But in the game after that, Nintendo, you need to return to the concept of Super Mario Bros. 3‘s Giant Land, but in 3D, and it needs to be constantly innovating on the concept throughout. Got it? Great.
If nothing else, let this missive implore you to play Astro Bot. I was fairly horrified when I saw that Sony is pricing it the same as a AAA 50 hour game, because cutesy 3D platformers are a hard sell at $60. And while I still believe it’d sell far more than twice as many copies at half the price, I can also assure you that the sheer concentrated joy within out-values any number of looter shooters or zombie-fests.
A single level has me thinking Nintendo developers might be wriggling uncomfortably in their seats, realizing that there’s finally some competition out there, another developer capable of cutting a slice from their enormous, delicious pie. And that’s pretty special.
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