Daydreaming. That’s how it started. Daydreaming. Cocoon designer and director Jeppe Carlsen, whose previous works include Inside and Limbo, was simply daydreaming one day, and the idea of a game that encapsulated worlds within worlds within worlds came to him.
“I’ve been making game mechanics and designing personas for so many years that I also just walk around in everyday life and think about mechanics,” Carlsen tells me over Zoom. “I don’t remember the exact context or what triggered it. It was just a thought of like, what if you could basically have a level, that is to begin with just a maze or a level, but you can jump out of it. And you can carry that around. And you can put these levels into each other.
“There was just that thought.”
It may have been a fleeting thought at first – something that was all just part of a daydream for Carlsen – but it was one that would not leave. It stayed with the designer, and he soon mentioned it to his friends. The idea fascinated them, much like it did him. Worlds within worlds, what could that be? What it would ultimately become was Cocoon, a breathtaking puzzle-platformer, and one of the best games to release this year.