Director Nicolas Doucet previously confirmed that Team Asobi will add at least 15 new speedrun levels to the game for free as post-launch content.

Astro Bot has been an absolute revelation, as evidenced by the fact that it has become the best-reviewed game of the year, and though the platformer already has no shortage of content to delight players with, developer Team Asobi has more of it in the pipeline. Director and studio head Nicolas Doucet previously confirmed that the game will receive at least 15 “playful” speedrun levels before the end of the year, and in another interview with YouTube channel Quest Daily, he has offered further details.

As per Doucet, the upcoming free DLC will be focused on adding in smaller levels built around speedrunning, a feature that proved quite popular in Astro’s Playroom. On top of that, he confirmed the new levels will also bring with them new VIP bots to rescue, which means additional cameo characters based on other franchises related to PlayStation will also be making appearances.

“It will be smaller. It’s not going to be like, you know, a huge, huge amount, but it will be focusing on one of the features that people enjoyed in Astro’s Playroom- that was the speedruns,” Doucet said (transcription via Gematsu). “You know, there were some speedruns, and the levels were quite short, but it was the fact that you could replay and keep shaving time off… with some new VIP bots to rescue, so some characters we didn’t include yet will appear. But yeah, that’s going to come, and that’s going to focus really on kind-of challenging levels.”

Doucet also confirmed that the speedrun levels will come with leaderboards.

Meanwhile, as for what the new VIP bots could be, if Astro Bot’s end credits are anything to go by, we could be in for cameo appearances from properties such as Assassin’s Creed, Rayman, Stellar Blade, and more.

Astro Bot is available on PS5.