For a free game that comes with the PlayStation 5, one largely designed just to showcase all the bells and whistles of Sony’s next-gen DualSense controller, Astro’s Playroom is surprisingly fun. It’s not just a great toybox to experience the DualSense’s haptic feedback, adaptive triggers, microphone, and more, it also delivers the best proof-of-concept pack-in I’ve played since Wii Sports. This is a truly joyous homage to PlayStation history, as well as an experimental platformer I can only hope to see turned into a larger experience during the PS5’s lifetime.
Developed by Team Asobi, Astro’s Playroom follows in the impressive footsteps of its excellent PSVR exclusive, Astro Bot: Rescue Mission. Much like that adventure crafted its levels and challenges around the concept of viewing a platformer in VR, here Team Asobi has really considered what it means to build one around the DualSense. You could technically play these levels without any of the DualSense’s new functionality, but like its predecessor Playroom serves as a strong argument for just how immersive an experience can be when fully using this new technology.
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Astro’s literal Playroom is, amusingly, the “inside” of your PlayStation 5 console, with its CPU Plaza hub offering you gateways to four main worlds: Cooling Springs, GPU Jungle, Memory Meadows, and SSD Speedway. Each offers a unique approach to conveying sensation through the DualSense and features its own platforming hooks, ranging from the just alright act of rolling a ball around using the touchpad in Memory Meadows to the enjoyable jumping frog suit of Cooling Springs to the stellar monkey climbing and swinging of GPU Jungle.
[poilib element="quoteBox" parameters="excerpt=All%20of%20that%20is%2C%20fundamentally%2C%20tied%20around%20the%20fun%20of%20using%20the%20DualSense%20controller."]Across all of them, you’ll still mostly be getting around with the basic running, jumping, punching, spin attacking, and hovering present in Rescue Mission. It’s a simple control scheme that anyone should be able to grasp easily, with Astro still having quite the sensitive jump and hovering window that really requires some precision. By keeping Astro’s basic movement options simple, Team Asobi is able to keep layering new ideas and new mechanics on top of those controls, which creates a continuous stream of inventive uses for them in Playroom’s various worlds.
All of that is, fundamentally, tied around the fun of using the DualSense controller. As the first real showcase of how its haptic feedback allow players to “feel” things like the trudge of a character walking through mud, or the difference between being in water versus on a grassy plain, Astro Bot does an impressive job of showcasing the variety of what it can pull off. Water emits a light, wavy pulse through the controller to mimic Astro’s swimming, while ice offers light, consistent taps of rumble that are coupled with a simulated ice sound coming from the controller’s speaker.
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One way Astro Bot cleverly sows the seeds of these concepts – which do a remarkable job of consistently tricking my brain into buying into the different topography – is the lobby hallway ahead of each world. Before jumping into any of the locales (all of which are just a simple animation away, with no loading screens in between), the portal to each world features the type of terrain you’ll primarily encounter. So, before hopping into Cooling Springs, there’s a small pool for Astro to splash around in, or ahead of SSD Speedway, I can stomp around the mechanical mesh platforms that will blanket the upcoming levels. They’re the most subtle uses of the DualSense, but it’s a nice way to set the scene.
But once you do dive in, there’s no shortage of joy that comes from how Team Asobi has translated in-game surfaces, objects, and movement into different DualSense sensations. Hail hitting my bot on the head causes little pops of rumble to strike all around the controller, the pull of a bow and arrow requires some added pressure on the trigger coupled with the satisfying plunk of release as the arrow shoots out. But perhaps the aspects that best show how developers can successfully elicit the feeling of swimming through water or pushing against a gust of wind is when Team Asobi combines multiple DualSense features to produce a result greater than the sum of its parts.
The combinations can be something simple like running a finger up the touchpad slowly to zip Astro into a new suit, while the realistic sound of a zipper cinching up plays and the DualSense thumps depending on how slowly or quickly you zip. Or it can become more complex, like the Memory Meadows-specific mechanic of a little spaceship suit Astro can wear, which uses both adaptive triggers to control the velocity of your ship’s thrusters, for which there’s also haptic feedback to indicate how much the ship is rumbling (or if you bump into any walls) while the rocket exhaust sound lowers and raises depending on how fast you’re going. Yes, the haptic feedback plays a big part in all this, like when raindrops start falling harder on Astro’s head and the pitter patter tremble of your controller simultaneously grows – but it’s the added hook of rain sounds emanating from the its speaker that really made me think “Oh no, I need to get out of this rain.”
