Astro Bot is not the kind of game that usually wins Game of the Year. Team Asobi’s intrepid botboy is up against a typical slate of hardcore games for hardcore gamers: 80-hour RPGs, highly demanding action games, and immersive, open-world adventures that took thousands of developers years to handcraft.
So fixed to norms this award show is, they’re trying to give Elden Ring the top honors yet again. Astro Bot, meanwhile, a brisk, joyful, fun-for-the-whole-family affair, feels like it snuck onto the list (perhaps by shrinking down to the size of a mouse). GOTY is for real games like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Sekiro, so what is the little Mario rip-off doing here?
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And yet, The Little Bot That Could is considered a front-runner this year – an obvious contender from the moment it launched to universal acclaim in early September. Prior to Astro Bot’s arrival there really were no clear standouts, as the final nominees make clear.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth was great, but didn’t stay in the conversation for long (largely because it’s too long and many never finished it). Black Myth: Wukong is popular, but reviewed worse than any other GOTY nominee to date. No one expected Elden Ring’s Shadow of the Erdtree DLC to be eligible, and Balatro, an obvious Best Indie nom, is even less of a GOTY-type game than Astro Bot. Unless you were one of the eight people who played Metaphor: ReFantazio last month, you probably declared Astro Bot the game of the year back in September and haven’t seen anything since that could change your mind.
Astro Bot Is For Everyone
And while Astro isn’t the typical Game of the Year game, it isn’t the first of its kind. 2021’s winner, It Takes Two, has a lot of the same charm, creativity, and ingenuity as Astro Bot, while also sharing the same 3D platformer genre. The comparison goes even deeper for me personally, as I played through Astro Bot by passing the controller back and forth with my partner who, despite my near-constant prodding, has hardly a single gamer bone in her body. In fact, It Takes Two was the last game we played together. She loved it, and she also loves Astro Bot. That’s good enough for me.
Astro Bot should win Game of the Year for much the same reason that It Takes Two did: it has the highest potential to touch the most people. Astro Bot is a game that satisfies the core gaming audience’s desires while also appealing to the casual and non-gamer audience. It’s those games that manage to inspire the broadest audience that deserve the highest honors. If people who don’t even play games are connecting with Astro Bot, there must be something profoundly special about it.
Games This Good Don’t Come Along Every Day
For us students of the craft, it’s easy to see Astro’s genius. It’s an exceptionally well-paced and beautifully crafted experience brimming with unbridled creativity. Team Asobi held nothing back in designing Astro Bot and it shows in every exhilarating level, every ingenious power-up, and every delightful Easter Egg. Any of the dozens of mechanics introduced throughout Astro Bot are strong enough to carry their own game, but Team Asobi had the confidence to throw all of them out before they could get stale, and the talent to follow each of them up with an even cooler, more exciting mechanic in the next level (and the next one, and the next one).
Rarely are games this delightful so packed with compelling gameplay, but Astro Bot manages to strike the perfect balance between white-knuckle precision platforming and joyful, unguided exploration. It is at times the embodiment of pure play, offering aimless interactivity in a world full of curiosities, and at times intensely demanding on your reflexes and muscle memory. But whether you’re dressing up as a cow and dancing with Crash Bandi-bot or frantically spraying lava with a rubber duckie to create little paths while you grip the controller so hard you might break it, Astro Bot is singular in its vision and flawless in its execution.
I don’t know if I’ve ever played a game whose ‘side’ content feels as mandatory as Astro Bot’s. Every collectible bot, puzzle piece, and bonus level is so well implemented that it feels critical to the experience; made with so much care an intention that you feel compelled to do and see it all. There is no fat to trim, no triple-A bloat to find. Everything Astro has to offer is worth your time and attention. A 10/10 if there ever was one. The other nominees are great in some ways and flawed in others, but Astro Bot is as flawless as a game can be, and it deserves to win Game of the Year.
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