Nicolas Doucet, the game director on Astro Bot, has revealed that the Team Asobi-developed platformer went through 23 pitch iterations before the team showcased it to Sony management.
Speaking during a panel at the Game Developers Conference recently (via GamesRadar), Doucet revealed, “The original pitch for Astro Bot was written in May, 2021, so, a few months after we began prototyping the game. We went through 23 iterations before it was shown to the top management.”
When it was presented to Sony bigwigs, Astro Bot was pitched with terms such as “happy gameplay,” “techno magic,” and “overflowing charm, which is all about art, animation, music, etcetera — all the things that put smiles on peoples’ faces.”
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Doucet also touched on the initial plans for the game’s ending, which would have featured a “completely dismembered Astro, so you gained the torso without the head.” However, he admitted “some people [were] really upset in the team, for good reasons.” As such, they settled on a “lighter approach with humour, where the player will replace all the parts, and it still conveys the right emotions. The head is always on Astro’s body.”
Astro Bot was released in September 2024 for PS5 and scooped up numerous Game of the Year awards. You can read our full review here.
[Source – GamesRadar]