Astro Bot, which has won 192 Game of the Year Awards, also went through 23 different pitch iterations before it was shown to Playstation execs

Astro Bot, Team Asobi and Sony Interactive Entertainment’s endearing, cute-robot-centric PS5 platformer which has won a whopping 192 Game of the Year Awards as of this writing, may be one of the most highly-acclaimed games in recent years by gamers and critics alike — but it wasn’t a surefire hit from the beginning during the planning stages.

“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,” studio and game director Nicolas Doucet explained at a panel at the 2025 Game Developers Conference.

One recurring motif in the creation of Astro Bot revolved around the making of Astro Bot was that the 3D action platformer — which sees players commanding the eponymous Astro, a cute little white and blue robot through different planets and galaxies, solving puzzles and battling enemies — prioritized fun, engaging gameplay with a focus on positive and joyful experiences.

Astro Bot/Team Asobi and SIE

In fact, when finalizing the pitch for the 2024 sequel to Astro’s Playroom, Doucet says the Team Asobi accentuated terms like “happy gameplay,” “techno magic,” and “overflowing charm, which is all about art, animation, music, etcetera – all the things that put smiles on peoples’ faces” when presenting it to Playstation execs.

“Generally speaking, we delivered the game quite close to the original pitch,” Doucet explained, although there was one massive difference in the game’s preliminary stages that had a much more twisted ending.

Warning: Spoilers for Astro Bot ahead.

“So, at the end of the game, Astro sacrificed himself for the team,” Doucet revealed, “and as the credits roll, we wanted to make a very grieving moment of rebuilding Astro.” Doucet noted that this included players taking control of a “completely dismembered Astro, so you gained the torso without the head.”

For a game that was all about “happy gameplay” and “overflowing charm,” this robotic body horror was too much even for Team Asobi. Understandably, “some people were really upset in the team, for good reasons,” Doucet explained. The team went with a “lighter approach with humor, where the player will replace all the parts, and it still conveys the right emotions. The head is always on Astro’s body,” Doucet said.

“But it was an interesting debate that really made us discover our own DNA,” he added.

Doucet previously noted at the 2025 GDC that he’s happy with the overall playtime — which some critics and players might disparage as being fairly brief — of Astro Bot, which takes a little over 11 hours of playtime on average to complete and close to 20 hours to complete to 100%.

“From the start, we were in the mindset that it’s OK to make a compact game, and I think it’s really important – especially going into this year – it’s OK to make a small game,” said Doucet.

He added, “In order to exist in this very busy world, I think it’s sometimes better to settle for a good spot in the second week rather than a bad spot in the first week. A lot of choices we made with Astro Bot could be labelled as AA… like the size of the team, the size of the game, there’s no voice, it’s not open world, but that doesn’t really matter. We could still make something that gets people really happy.”

Do you find it amusing that Astro Bot, which has won 192 Game of the Year Awards, also went through 23 different pitch iterations before it was shown to Playstation execs? Let us know in the comments.