Cocoon from Annapurna Interactive is an isometric puzzle game featuring a quiet and barren world. The game features a bipedal beetle-looking main character that jumps between worlds scattered with techno bugs. Its fascinating hook is the world turns into a carry-able orb you jump out of that turns into a key for most of what you do.

The showcased demo started with a dry, adobe rock landscape with a fairly linear path to follow. Starting puzzles began with triggering timed switches in order to create bridges. There’s also a type of puzzle with black beacons on the ground that lit up as they’re walked across. Slowly the puzzles develop into a coordinated sequence of events. One was a series of pipes with switches along the path that’d rotate a curved piece from one section to the next. Placing an orb on the top, you race to hit each switch in time to make sure it continues along the right path, eventually reaching a trigger that makes a walkway to the next path. Another was a reprisal of the black beacons with different symbols that needed to be touched in the right order. The progression of the puzzles feel like a natural difficulty curve with a few “aha!” moments along the way.

A boss battle was featured at the end, which is a huge wasp I was stuck with on an island. They’d shoot a string of golden spikes in sequences. Eventually I was able to dig out a bomb bug roaming underneath the ground, making it explode in the wasp’s face. The second wave of the boss was a string of rotating spikes you have to walk across without touching. The patterns in which they moved have an ebb and flow almost like it was breathing. Mercifully, if you get hit and die, rather than getting a game over screen it spits you out of the level and just have to jump right in.

Cocoon from Annapurna Interactive comes out 2023.