Like any platformer, Team Asobi’s award-winning game Astro Bot also features power-ups to help clear stages faster and much more manageable. While some of the power-ups in the game were thought up to match Astro Bot’s jump-focused gameplay, some of them were inspired by the PS5 controller, the DualSense.

Team Asobi revealed this in a recent interview with Japanese gaming publication Famitsu, in which the studio was given the spotlight after its Game of the Year win at The Game Awards earlier this month.

Team Asobi Shares Inspiration Ideas for Astro Bot Power-Ups

The studio was asked about the variety of power-ups available in the game and how Team Asobi came up with the ideas. Lead Game Designer Hiroaki Yatoku shared that the entire dev team brainstormed for ideas. Also chiming in was Nicolas Doucet, the game director of Astro Bot, who said (translated by DeepL), “There are two ways to come up with ideas for power-ups. The first is power-ups that match a jumping action game, such as the Bulldog Booster, Twin Frog Gloves, and the Chicken Rocket. These may be common actions in themselves, but by combining them with the DualSense wireless controller, I think it created a fresh experience.”

Following up with the statement, Doucet added, “The second is power-ups that were born from research to express the functions of the DualSense. For example, the idea for the sponge came from a tech demo. The goal was to express the feel of a sponge, and the experience was so fun that we adopted it for the power-up.”

It’s worth noting that Team Asobi’s Astro’s Playroom is a pre-installed game that comes with every PS5, and was also used to explain the various features of the DualSense controller. Speaking of the game, we published a deep dive look into Astro’s Playroom haptic feedback implemented by Team Asobi that you’ll want to check out.

While Team Asobi pumped out weekly updates that delivered new content in November, the studio dropped one more major update for the Winter Wonder patch. There is no word yet on whether we’ll get more Astro Bot content in 2025, but I wouldn’t bet against it.