I’m playing Skyrim right now. I know what you’re thinking, “oh, I love replaying Skyrim, I can always go back to it” and you are wrong. I am playing Skyrim for the first time ever. Hopefully that gives you an idea of the scope of my backlog and why I’ve played very little this year, not even a single one of the Game of the Year nominees at the “prestigious” and “real” The Game Awards. There’s a lot to play! I don’t have the time or money to keep up with all these new releases and so I quite simply don’t try. But! I always have room in my heart for sweet little indie games (as evidenced by my game of the year every year for the past few years) and 2023 has been no exception, in that our winner has proved to be exceptional. This year, that game is Cocoon.

Cocoon doesn’t begin by offering you much of a story. It doesn’t end by offering you much of a story either unless you’re willing to think in abstract terms, WHICH I AM. You are an insect-like creature who crash lands on this beautiful desert planet. You’re not given a goal but naturally, you’re going to explore and learn what everything does. This switch moves that platform, this button reveals a new path, classic puzzle game stuff. Eventually though, you’ll approach a platform which, when activated, kicks you out of this world and into a grey reality. In this world, your previous world is now a ball which you can carry around and use for new puzzles. At this point, I’m going to recommend that if you don’t know what this game looks like you check out a quick trailer, because I’m good with my words but we’re dealing with concepts that words can barely explain. It’s worlds within worlds in which the worlds you no longer inhabit are puzzle solving tools in the worlds you do inhabit.

This all sounds quite mind bending and that’s for a very simple reason; it is. But, the genius of the game is that it takes you towards these difficult and confusing concepts very gently. There are no tutorials in the game, only exploration and experimentation. There’s an obstacle in your path that stops you from progressing, so try a new way to go around it. Exit your current world, head into a different world, pull a new item from there and use it to progress in the old world. It’s a method of puzzle presentation that never holds your hand but guides you ever so gently towards solutions in ways that made me literally gasp and shout at the screen. I felt consistently rewarded for my understanding of the game and for picking up new mechanics, remembering old and fusing them in new settings. All of this is to say that I have no idea how to write about the actual gameplay of a puzzle game! Puzzles! Pick up orbs, enter orbs, game!

The look and sound of the game is also absolutely perfect. The actual scale of these worlds is impossible to ascertain (as the ambiguous little ending seems to tease), which the visuals lean into. You seem to be a little bug creature traversing through little worlds, but even as you leap out into bigger worlds, the scale still prevails. Your worlds are all a little bit bigger than you, looming just a bit above you on top of oceans that are just too deep to swim in. Between all the chaos, it creates some coherence. I say chaos, the worlds all have designs that are distinct enough to make sure you’re never confused as to which thing was where. Just by colour, the distinction is simple. Red world, green world, purple world. You know what they do in other worlds, you know where you left it and you know what you’ll need to return to do. When the puzzles themselves are this brain bending, simplicity in design is a gift.

Finally, as is often crucial for indie games, Cocoon can fairly easily be finished in one sitting. If you need to take a step away and clear your brain between tricky puzzles, by all means go for it, but it rewards memory of things that have come before. It doesn’t hang around so long that you’re forgetting the earliest lessons it taught you, instead leaving on a high which, again, gestures towards a narrative for those who are interested. As a lover of puzzle games for most of my life, Cocoon hit all the spots I needed and wanted it to. It was a treat that I want to distribute to everyone and if puzzle games are even slightly your jam, it is a game that you owe it to yourself to play.

Honourable Mentions:

Sea of Stars: I’m someone who never gravitates to RPGs but Sea of Stars grabbed me regardless. Its throwback presentation appeals to someone unfamiliar with where we’re throwing back to and I can’t wait to keep discovering more.

Solar Ash: Though I had some issues with moments of traversal, Solar Ash excels because it just feels great. It’s a sci-fi skating game by way of Shadow of the Colossus, which works so much better than it should with that premise.

YEAH! YOU WANT “THOSE GAMES,” RIGHT? SO HERE YOU GO! NOW, LET’S SEE YOU CLEAR THEM!: The worst named game I played this year is also super fun, which makes recommending it annoying. It’s a series of games based on those fake mobile game ads you see, but where the games are real and actually fun! Drop in drop out fun, I can’t stop returning to it.