Team ASOBI's PS5-exclusive Astro Bot has the unfortunate task of following up Astro's Playroom, one of the best console launch titles of all time. With possibly the largest collection of Sony character cameos in any one game, six different galaxies encoming 80 levels for players to traverse, and no small lack of the same charm which made the previous title so infectiously fun, Astro Bot looks up to the challenge.

Astro Bot is Team ASOBI's largest game to date, with the small (roughly 60 people) studio starting development immediately after finishing Astro's Playroom. Players who enjoyed Playroom will find a lot to love in Astro Bot, as all of the character's previous abilities return along with brand-new ones, such as invincible Muteki armor that lets Astro traverse dangerous environments safely, and something called "hero gameplay," which will see Astro getting assistance from famous robot-ified PlayStation game protagonists.

Recently, Screen Rant had a chance to speak with Jamie Smith, Principal Animation Director for Astro Bot at Team ASOBI. Among other things, we talked about the process of turning classic PlayStation icons into Astro-style cameos, how to ensure children are having just as much fun as adults, and what new DualSense features players can expect. The following interview has been edited for clarity and to remove a brief discussion of our children's respective gaming habits.

Bringing PlayStation History To Life

How Astro Bot Pays Homage To Decades Of Video Games

Screen Rant: Astro Bot has a slew of cameos from all over PlayStation's history and, from what we've seen, no lack of charm in each of those interpretations. Still, they feel like Astro-style characters. What's the key element that makes Astro Bot's animation so visually distinct while keeping its Easter Eggs immediately recognizable to those familiar with it?

Jamie Smith: Regarding the style of animation, the key for us is the humor, right? We want everything to be filled with joy and fun. And we feel that that connection with the player, if you can get a deep connection based on humor, it's something that's much deeper than the player saying, "Oh, that's cool," right? If somebody actually laughs and giggles and smiles, it's a real strong connection. And that's one of the pillars of Team ASOBI, the charm. And the animation is a real key part of the charm.

What we think about before we do any animation in the game, but especially the cameos, is our animation style. And we have an animation style guide. I won't go into it, but I'll just briefly discuss.

On the first page, there's three words written, and it's fast, frantic, and fun. And these are our keywords that we think about every time we make a new animation. We think about it from this perspective. We want all of the new animations to be filled with high energy. This is why we want it to be fast, and we want unique acting.

We want to surprise the player. We don't want to show the player things they've seen before, or just normal or functional things. Every animation is a chance for us to get some humor and some unique acting and unique surprises into the game for the player. And obviously we don't have language in the game. So we rely heavily on the body acting, very universal acting, so everybody can understand it, irrespective of language or anything like that. That's basically the key, the way we think about animations in that way.

When we think about the bots' animations, and especially the cameos, it's almost like we imagine them as like children in a sense that they show their emotions. We want them to be very expressive with their emotions, and they wear all of their emotions on their sleeves. So if they're excited, you'll see them. They won't be able to control themselves. They're constantly moving. If they're sad or they're angry, they'd be really expressive about it. And this builds kind of a visual language for all of the characters across the game.

When we started working on the cameos, we developed a really good process where the first thing we do is play the game. We'd go back and we'd play all of these games together and really try and find the way to represent a whole game or a whole character or a whole series of games just in one or two animations. And that maybe sounds easy, but it's very difficult to find something that's universally understood.

So we played the game together, we discussed the games, and then we came up with areas that we wanted to focus on to really represent these cameo characters. And from there, we have this fantastic concept artist, Nakai-san [Toshihiko Nakai], and he draws these wonderful almost manga-like sheets of the stories, and with all the key poses and the key jokes and the humor. And from there, then we that to the animators, and then the animators take this plan, and we apply that animation style.

And then even at that point, we're still going back and we're looking at reference, we're looking at the way characters move and behave and what they do and what their personalities are. And then we create the animation cameos that you now see in the game. And after that, what we do, and this is for everything in the game, but specifically the animation, is we show it to the team.

Every two weeks, everybody in the team sits down in the office, controller in hand, and we play it together. We show the work we've done and we gauge the reaction of the team. If the team really react positively, if they laugh, they clap, they cheer, they make noise, we know we've succeeded, we've created something really special and fun. If the team's like mute and they're like, okay, that's cool. Oh yeah, I recognize that character and that's it. Then we think, okay, we need to go back, and we need to think about this again, because we really care about creating that deep connection.

Screen Rant: Can you name an example of one of those, any that were kind of difficult, and you brought it to the team, and they were just like, "Oh, I don't think this is how we should do this."

Jamie Smith: That's a very good question. I don't any specific examples, but I will say that often some of the difficult ones, and it's obvious, but we're representing some IPs that are kind of mature in nature, right? Some of these IPs are very different from the Astro Bot universe. They're polar opposite, in fact.

In order to bring them from their original form into our universe, it took more time and more thought than perhaps something that was more similar in tone to the work that we do at Team ASOBI. So we had to think more about how we are going to represent that in an authentic way, yet also apply our style to it.

Screen Rant: I imagine something like that would be Bloodborne, which, like, FromSoft couldn't even get Bloodborne back. [laughs sadly]

Jamie Smith: I don't want to spoil things for anybody, but we've got more than one FromSoftware cameo and reference. I'm a massive fan of FromSoft. But I'm a massive fan of so many of these franchises and characters that it's... I mean, sometimes I have to pinch myself, and we all do in the studio, because how did we manage to get so many incredibly famous, beloved characters in our game? Because when we first started, we kind of hoped that maybe the Sony first-party IPs, we'd be able to get. But even those, we didn't know, because we kind of had to build up relationships, and build up trust.

But they were really ive of us and kind of encouraged us more and more. And from that, then we started branching out into third-party stuff. So now we... I don't know, this is a bit of a spoiler, but I think we're allowed to say that we have third-party IPs in the game now.

All of it is just... It's kind of a dream in a way, because these are the franchises that we grew upon as children. These are the things that we played when we were kids. And to actually be able to have these and animate these and be trusted with these famous, beloved characters is just... It's incredible. As gamers, we're geeking out, and we're super appreciative of the trust that these wonderful developers have put in us with their characters.

Screen Rant: You talked about how it can be difficult to take a mature IP and then bring it to where a game like Astro Bot sits. I have a son. He's five now. But two years ago, Astro's Playroom was the first game he beat without any assistance at all. And so he's so looking forward to Astro Bot coming out. How difficult is it to ensure that these games are balanced so that it can be as fun for those of us in our 30s and our 40s, but it can still be a three-year-old's favorite game?

Jamie Smith: That's a fantastic question, and it's not the first time we've heard this. We've heard this a lot. And actually, my son's six now, and when I started working on Rescue Mission, he was born around that time. He grew up in Playroom, and he's been beta testing and master testing the game with me constantly for Astro Bot, and he loves it. So yeah, I'm pretty sure your son's going to love it, because my son absolutely loves it.

But no, very, very good question. How do we ensure that the game is suitable for younger players, first-time players, and players who are veteran players of platform games? And it's actually something we thought about a lot, and it's not an easy thing to do. We think we found a really good balance.

So, what we've done is we have different types of levels. We have the main levels and the secret levels. You can play through those, and my son can play through those levels by himself and clear those levels. But there's also hidden things and secret things in those levels that perhaps he won't be able to find.

We also have a helper. At the beginning of every level, when you go in, there's a little bird in a little glass container, like a little birdhouse. And you can spend some of the in-game currency, and you can access this bird. It'll fly behind you and give you hints. And when you're close to a bot or close to a puzzle, it'll give you a hint, right?

So for a child, somebody who's struggling with things like that, it's a great aid. And actually, to be perfectly honest, I've used it myself. When I was trying to get 100% of the game, there's some puzzles that even I couldn't find. Obviously, I've been working on the game, but I've not played absolutely every single section of every puzzle and got every single reward. So I use the bird as well, and it's super useful. But I guess the more veteran players, they won't want to use this. They want to try and find the puzzles themselves, find all the answers themselves. So that's one little function that we put in. Another thing is, we put challenge levels into the game.

The challenge levels are optional levels, but they're in every galaxy. They pop up, and you've got them constantly as you're going through the game. So you can jump out of the main level, and you can go into a challenge level. And you could spend like an hour in a challenge level, if it's one of the difficult ones. Just constantly replaying, improving, and it takes a lot of skill and dexterity to some of these levels. I'll be honest, I've been working on the game for three and a half years, and some of them challenge me. I can spend a long time trying to get past some of these levels.

So we really feel like we have a challenge for veteran gamers. But we also have an accessible entry for children, like my son and your son. We think we've covered both of those bases well.

The physics are wild in this game.

Screen Rant: Astro Bot is building up steam prior to release and has a very positive buzz surrounding it - some people are even predicting it will be a Game of the Year contender. A year ago, two years ago, that would feel excessively bold for a follow-up to a free launch title - are you at all surprised by the game's reception already?

Jamie Smith: I mean, we're extremely happy with it. [Laughs] We read everything, we read all the , maybe even too much. We take all of the comments and all the from Playroom and everything from the previews of this game, and we're really excited for the way things are going and the way people are enjoying the game.

In of being surprised, I think it's not surprised so much as we're just very, very happy that it's being appreciated in the way we'd hoped, right? I mean, when we made Playroom, it was originally just a small tech demo based around the DualSense and the DualSense's unique features. On top of that, we felt we built a very fun platforming game, something that was just a very tight, fun game from the start to the end, with lots to do and a really charming world.

When we built that, we kind of knew that we had the potential to make something like a full-scale game, right? And we got a lot of positive reception to it. Then we got green-lit to make this full-scale, epic game that we've made. So I think we already had the kind of confidence to go ahead and do this.

And we hoped that it would turn out to be something special that really resonated with fans. But we don't have any expectations about any talk about Game of the Year and all the deep things. We don't really ever think about that or hope about that. All we can do is focus on making something that we think is really special and just hope that it resonates with fans.

And this time, we've taken that core of Playroom, and we've scaled it up to a full-sized game, which is what a lot of people were asking for. But at the same time, we've increased the quality as well, everywhere.

So it's not only just a scale up, we've actually refined and improved all of the things from Playroom. So we really feel like everything that people loved in Playroom is now improved and in a much bigger, full-scale game. So yeah, we're super excited.

Screen Rant: You spoke about how Playroom started off as a showcase for the DualSense and then kind of snowballed from there. Are there any new DualSense features in Astro Bot that you weren't able to fit in the previous game that you were really excited to animate and play with?

Jamie Smith: I think an important thing to say is, it wasn't that things were left on the table from the previous game. Like we put everything, all of the stuff, all of the best stuff, we put into Playroom. But then once we then decided that we were gonna make this full-scale game, then we went back to the drawing board and we started developing new ideas and developing new ways to be creative with the DualSense.

And like, there's tons, like to be honest, there is tons of stuff. But, to give you just some examples, one thing we've done in this game is we've taken the DualSense to a whole other level. Before, the DualSense was used to basically bring the world to life, and ground the player in the world, with all these feelings and the way you experienced the world. It complemented it and it made the whole experience more tactile, you know, and we're really pleased with that.

But this time, we've actually incorporated it into gameplay. So one thing we've done that's really cool is we've got a gameplay function where Astro can actually touch walls and in the haptics, you can feel the wall. And at some points in the wall, the haptics are different and you know that there's a puzzle or there's something special there.

So what would have been in a traditional adventure game, you would have had a crack in the wall and the next room you'd have a bomb and you know you've got to come back and you know there's a puzzle there. Now what we've done is use the haptics of the DualSense to actually hint at progression points, secret areas, gameplay areas, and that's a step up from what we've done before, and it's something that we're super excited for people to try out.

But on top of that, we've just made a whole new bunch of power-ups that really feel incredible. The first level where you have the inflatable Astro power, that came from a very small DualSense experiment where we had a balloon that you blew up and then you released the air from it. That's all it was.

It's a very small tech demo of a balloon. But we identified that this feels amazing. That feeling when you release the air and the balloon goes [pfft sound]. It's kind of exciting, and it's kind of out of control. We were like, well, let's take this, and how do we apply this in the game?

Then we go through the process of figuring out how we can put this into the gameplay. How can we make this a gameplay mechanic? How we can use this to improve Astro's platforming abilities? We have tons of power-ups that are based on brand-new little DualSense experiments that we did in order to make unique sensations and unique feelings.

Screen Rant: Out of everything that you've worked on in Astro Bot, what are you most excited for players to see? What do you hope players take away from the experience of playing Astro Bot?

Jamie Smith: I think there's so many facets to the game. The one thing that I would like players to really see is the quality that we've put into this game, from the very start of the game to the end. The game's constantly throwing new gameplay experiences, new power-ups, new ways of playing into the game. And this is something that I think we've done really well with this game.

You can press the Start button on the game and, all the way to the end credits, you're getting new gameplay experiences. Even like 15 minutes before the end credits, you're getting a new gameplay function that you've never had before in the game. You know, we really want to keep the excitement and that kind of creativity constantly throughout the whole game.

So that's one thing that I'm really excited for players to feel, you know, that kind of variety of just gameplay and variety of worlds and levels and how we've basically managed to keep that through the whole duration of the game. Another thing is, the physics. I mean, I would just say for a personal note, the physics are wild in this game.

We've done some incredible things with the physics. If you see the water physics, the way water and oil mixes together and Astro can run around in it and mix it all together and, you know, all the many objects we've got. It's basically like jumping into a child's ball pit, and you're just surrounded by all these objects all with physics simulations.

We've put all of these toys into the game, and it's like, there you go guys, play with it and have fun. And it's really, really exciting. I'm excited for players to get their hands on it.

Astro Bot is available now exclusively on PS5.