One of the best surprises from Sony’s State of Play presentation today was the announcement of a new Astro Bot game. Astro’s Playroom, the pack-in game installed on PlayStation 5s in 2020, was a delightful platformer that paid tribute to PlayStation’s history, showed off the tech of the DualSense controller, and was a blast to play. Now, we’re getting another one from Team Asobi titled, simply, Astro Bot.
The game leaked earlier this month, and many of the details from the leak turned out to be true. Astro Bot features a fennec fox robot character that accompanies Astro on his journey through a variety of environments. Astro also flies around on a DualSense controller at one point, so I expect that will probably be steered through motion controls. Oh, there’s also a PlayStation 5 space ship. Wait, Kratos just gave Astro his axe? Oh, it looks like he’s teaming up with a bunch of different PlayStation characters. This shit rules. Game of the Year contender, you heard it here first. Unlike Astro’s Playroom, it looks like Astro Bot will be a boxed video game you can find on store shelves on September 6.
Check out the trailer below:
Astro originates from The Playroom, which was another tech-demo-style experience on the PlayStation 4 that launched alongside the system in 2013. This was followed up with Playroom VR, which held the same purpose but for the PlayStation VR headset in 2016. The character finally got a self-titled game with the excellent Astro Bot Rescue Mission in 2018, a PlayStation VR exclusive. Astro’s Playroom was the first full-fledged game starring Astro that didn’t require a peripheral, and it was a hit, so it’s good to see the little guy get a new game.