Free Speedrunning Levels and Leaderboards Let You See How Good You Actually Are At Astro Bot

Astro Bot was a smash hit when it launched last month. While its quality was no surprise given developer Team Asobi’s history, players may not have been ready for quite how challenging some of its toughest stages can get. Now, Team Asobi is ready to put your platforming skills to the test even more with a series of weekly updates. Along with the tricky new stages, the updates will include a grand total of 10 new Special Bots to rescue, for anyone who wasn’t satisfied with the hundreds already on offer.

The set of new levels coming to Astro Bot is designed to push your skills in a new way. While there is plenty of challenge in the game already, the new additions are built for speed. Each will come with a leaderboard ranking your time to finish against others online, so you’ll need to perfect both your platforming ability and your speed to take the top spot in the charts. The new levels are being added as free updates, so anyone who owns Astro Bot now or buys it in the future will have access to them.

The first level being added in the new speedrunning series arrives on October 17. Titled Building Speed, it’s a city-themed stage set in a construction site in the clouds. Swinging construction cranes, destructible boxes, and bounce pads look to make up much of the level. You’ll also have the use of Barkster, the bulldog/jetpack that appears in multiple levels in the base game.

Once Building Speed lands, Astro Bot will receive another new speedrunning challenge level every Thursday until November 14. An announcement for the updates on the PlayStation Blog spells out the name of each level, which gives a fair idea of what to expect from future releases. Here’s the schedule for the new levels:

• Oct 17: Building Speed
• Oct 24: Let it Slide
• Oct 31: Spring-loaded Run
• Nov 7: Helium Heights
• Nov 14: Rising Heat

That doesn’t tell us exactly what’s coming in the new levels, but if you struggle with Astro Bot’s spring-loaded bounce pads or lava stages, you may want to start practicing now.

Each new level also includes two new Special Bots, which are modeled after PlayStation video game characters, to save. PlayStation has already revealed that Stellar Blade’s protagonist, Eve, and a Helldivers 2 soldier will be among the new bots, but it’s leaving the rest as a secret for now.

Astro Bot’s celebration of all things Sony didn’t quite sit right with me when I played it, but there’s still no denying that it’s a lot of fun. Its combination of tight platforming with seemingly endless creativity in powerups and level design already makes Astro Bot a blast, and more of what already made the game a hit is hard to argue with. Some dedicated players may be craving more than one new level per week, but I’m hopeful that focusing on a small number of stages, released one at a time, will let each of Team Asobi’s new creations shine.

The fact that they’re more than the typical Astro Bot stages is just icing on the cake. Even for players who’ve already mastered the toughest levels the game has to offer, adding the extra twist of needing to speed through these new challenges should keep them feeling fresh. For a game as varied as Astro Bot, shaking up its core design is perfectly fitting. Not to mention that so much of the game’s joy already comes from sharing videos and screenshots of its most clever bits, so getting to compete with other players online and show off your best times seems like a natural place to go next.

Even with my distaste for Astro Bot’s showcase of Sony intellectual property, I may have to dust off my copy to see just how slow I am compared to the game’s biggest fans when the new speedrun levels drop.