Hey PlayStation, I’ll take more games like Astro Bot, please

This story is part of the Digital Trends Summer Gaming Marathon series

Sony kicked off a marathon of gaming reveals this week with an exciting State of Play stream. The 30-minute broadcast shed some light on what’s coming to the PlayStation 5 in the back half of 2024 and beyond. We saw an extended look at Concord, got a release date for Bloober Team’sSilent Hill 2 remake, and learned more about Supermassive’s Until Dawn remake. But the most exciting announcement of the show wasn’t a live-service shooter or a game pushing photorealistic visuals. It was a cute little robot who stole the show.

Astro Bot got the final slot during the State of Play stream — and for good reason. Sony revealed a delightful trailer for its upcoming platformer that had social media buzzing. Even this morning, you’ll find “GOTY” (game of the year) trending on X (formerly Twitter) and posts preemptively crowning Astro Bot as 2024’s best game.

“Astro Bot is exactly the kind of thing I dearly missed from Sony,” John Linneman of Digital Foundry tweets. “I’m overjoyed that they were given the chance to make it. I’m genuinely excited for it. Possible GOTY candidate if it’s as good as I’m hoping.”

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Linneman’s thoughts likely echo what a lot of excited fans are feeling right now. It’s not just that Astro Bot looks like an incredibly polished, adorable platformer — it’s that it feels like a return to a lost era of PlayStation that players have long been yearning for.

Blast from the past

I grew up with a few video game consoles, but I have especially cherished memories of my original PlayStation. Countless hours were spent running from boulders in Crash Bandicoot or flying around in Spyro the Dragon. I can’t tell you how many times I played through the first two songs in PaR