There are a lot of ways to think about The Metamorphosis. Long-time readers will no doubt find little surprise in learning that I'm partial to Nabokov's position that Samsa's struggle is that of an artist surrounded by haters who won't let him do his thing. Perhaps if Franz Kakfa had lived in a time with videogames, there would have been more sci-fi orbs in his book, and the haters represented would have been boss fights instead of something as humdrum and banal as "financially parasitic family members who are disgusted by your cool new bug form."

Am I comparing Geometric Interactive's debut title COCOON to Kafka's Metamorphosis? God, no. Am I desperate to put my one year of undergraduate English literature to use? That is for you to decide, dear reader. Much like the orbs that our insectoid protagonist deploys to solve puzzles, your view and interpretation of a text is a lens and portal into another world. Except your interpretation of a text, unlike some of the orbs, cannot fire projectiles at anything. That is the beauty of COCOON. Not only do these spherical artifacts imbue you with power to overcome obstacles and blast haters, they also contain the next set of obstacles to overcome and haters to blast. Wallace, in all his hundreds of pages of nested footnotes and Sierpinski gasket plotlines could not have foreseen the power of putting both puzzles and haters in a rad sci-fi Matryoshka doll. Once again, I studied English literature for a year in university.

COCOON is now available on PC, Xbox One X|S. Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and Nintendo Switch.