Cocoon is a ball-juggling worlds-within-worlds adventure

(Image credit: Geometric Interactive)

Cocoon is a new game coming from Geometric Interactive, the studio founded by Jeppe Carlsen, who was lead gameplay designer on Playdead's Limbo and Inside. Needless to say, that kind of track record deserves a bit of respect, and Cocoom's definitely looking like a bit of an oddball.

The trailer opens with a character I'm going to call Butterfly Man being 'born' from, well, a cocoon. Initially it looks like an isometric puzzler until the character drops a ball into a hole, which kind of then sucks Butterfly Man through a warp to another place.

The rest of the footage shows these large balls doing various different things, and several similar perspective-shifts: it looks very much like one of those games where you'll be jumping between places to change things that have knock-on effects in other locations.

There's little else on Cocoon beyond the developer's own description of it as "a sci-fi adventure," but Inside is one of the best games ever so this is worth keeping an eye on. It'll be out in 2023 on Game Pass and PC.

Rich is a games journalist with 15 years' experience, beginning his career on Edge magazine before working for a wide range of outlets, including Ars Technica, Eurogamer, GamesRadar+, Gamespot, the Guardian, IGN, the New Statesman, Polygon, and Vice. He was the editor of Kotaku UK, the UK arm of Kotaku, for three years before joining PC Gamer. He is the author of a Brief History of Video Games, a full history of the medium, which the Midwest Book Review described as "[a] must-read for serious minded game historians and curious video game connoisseurs alike."