The creative director of Astro Bot revealed that the game was nearly turned into an open-world game, but the team ultimately decided to go with a level-based approach to have more control over the game’s variety. Astro Bot’s creative director, Nicholas Doucet, confirmed that the team contemplated an open-world approach for the sequel to Astro’s Playroom. However, Team Asobi chose a traditional level-based approach with larger areas for more control over the game’s variety.
Team Asobi’s development process involves prototyping gameplay mechanics without knowing specifically what game they are making. They created numerous demos focusing on new ways to use the DualSense, which were then translated into in-game power-ups. While there is curiosity about how open-world elements would have been implemented, the current sequel appears to be the perfect evolution of Playroom’s mechanics.
Not everything needs to be open-world, and Astro Bot is expected to prove that.
