Astro Bot's Big Success the Result of Keeping Scope Small and Simple, Says Director 1

Astro Bot charmed the world last year, giving PS5 players a truly fantastic platformer that would go on to win numerous Game of the Year nods.

In a talk at this year's Game Developers Conference, director Nicolas Doucet talks about the making of this cutesy platformer, focusing mostly on how limiting the scope helped create a better experience.

"From the start, we were in the mindset that it's okay to make a compact game, and I think it's really important — especially going into this year — it's okay to make a small game," Doucet says.

He argues that keeping the project smaller scale allowed himself and the rest of Team Asobi more control over their work, faster design iteration, and the ability to pack the game with all its best ideas.

"The prospect of a game you can actually complete is a really, really positive argument [for small games]," he says. "That meant being okay with the game being 12 hours, but if it had been eight hours — and the eight hours were fantastic — we would have settled for that to reach consistent quality."

In an overcrowded landscape where the top dogs are all vying for player retention with enormous worlds and adventures that last forever, Doucet says it can be beneficial to simply not compete on that level.

"In order to exist in this very busy world, I think it's sometimes better to settle for a good spot in second league, rather than a bad spot in the top league," he says.

His argument for a smaller scope delves into some interesting facts and figures about Astro Bot; the game has just 12 minutes and 30 seconds of cutscenes total, keeping players in control nearly the entire time; words in the game amount to fewer than 5,000; and development ran for three years and six months, a comparably short cycle nowadays.

"A lot of the choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled double-A or maybe lacking in ambition — like the size of the team, the size of the game, the fact there's no text, no voice, and its not an open world," Doucet says. "But that doesn't really matter. We still made a game that made people really happy, and in fact it was probably the simplicity that a lot of players made time for."

It was certainly refreshing to play a game so rich with imaginative ideas from start to finish, never outstaying its welcome and, if we're honest, we wanted more of when the credits rolled.

Fortunately, Astro Bot has been supported post-launch with a number of free updates adding more levels; long may that continue.

What are your thoughts on Astro Bot's smaller scale contributing to its success? Tell us in the comments section below.

[source gamedeveloper.com, via eurogamer.net]