Wattam (PS4)

When Wattam was first announced, the initial teaser trailer was enough to make me curious about it, especially since it was a product of Keita Takahashi, the creator of Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, the former of which is one of my favorite game series. When it initially launched in 2019, I will admit I didn’t pick it up right away since I still wasn’t sure what exactly the game was about. I did, however, become more interested when I stumbled upon a physical copy of the game through iam8bit, which featured three different covers (Sun, Apple and Sushi; I picked up the Sun cover from Best Buy). After finally getting a chance to play this game, I thought it held up with Takahashi’s previous work, despite some frustrations.

In the beginning, the universe had everything. Then, following a great cataclysm, the universe had nothing. Mayor, the only known remaining inhabitant, feels alone, however he starts to make friends when a stone comes to life. Following this, the universe slowly becomes inhabited once again.

There isn’t much to the story and it’s pretty easy to follow, however it is surprisingly dark for what it is, especially when compared to Keita Takahashi’s previous works. There is, however, much more to the story than the game initially lets on, with the backstory delivered over the course of the game in chunks.

In a bit of consistency with Takahashi’s other work, the gameplay is simple yet experimental. Simple actions include getting characters to hold hands using the Square and Circle buttons, as well as climbing and stacking on top of each other when nearby, which provide a number of uses to solve simple puzzles and advance the game. There are additionally a wide variety of playable characters, which can be swapped at any time either by using the left analog stick or by scrolling through your collection (displaying the character’s current general location) after pressing left on the D-Pad, with your current playable character designated by a large arrow. Since the left stick is used for character select, camera controls are relegated to L2 and R2, though you can also zoom in/out with L1 and R1, plus zooming out far enough allows control over larger characters that you could not otherwise.

Triangle is generally used as a context-sensitive button, usually for conversing with other characters or for picking up/throwing objects. Some characters also have a special tied to Triangle that can be activated under certain conditions. For instance, Mayor’s power is that he has a bomb hidden under his hat that can send himself and other nearby characters flying upwards, though he needs to recover his hat between uses.

The game additionally features drop-in drop-out local multiplayer, though I did not explore this feature during my playthrough.

If enough characters hold hands, they can dance in a circle.
(Mayor is the green cube wearing a bowler hat.)

While it uses a different art style from Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy, the overall visual presentation is highly reminiscent of those games, down to featuring a wide array of characters and objects rendered using more simplistic shapes. The HUD is particular reminded me of Katamari Damacy, with the current player character displayed in the corner while reflecting what their current actions are. The music is also somewhat reminiscent of Katamari Damacy in its general style, though there are some more emotional pieces that tie in with the darker nature of the storytelling.

Putting that aside, the visuals do well to stand out from Takahashi’s previous works, with each character having a unique silhouette that clearly gets across what object they are supposed to represent. In terms of audio design, everyone speaks in a gibberish language, with the actual dialogue relegated to on-screen text or subtitles. In a nice attention to detail, every unique character also has their own unique music when playing as them that manages to fit what they are. On top of this, each set of characters “speaks” a different language depending on the Season they are associated with; Spring characters’ dialogue is rendered in English, Summer characters Russian, Autumn characters Korean and Winter characters Japanese.

While the game is overall enjoyable, I did run into some issues along the way. One that I ran into often was that it could often become difficult to swap between nearby characters when several were on-screen at once, requiring me to have to manipulate the camera to select the right one. On that note, the camera controls were inverted by default, though fortunately I was able to reverse this in the options menu (it’s one of those games that thinks “left to look left” and “right to look right” are “inverted”). When freely running about, it’s also very easy to accidentally stack or climb a character when you don’t want to, since brushing up against each other is enough to get it going. One of the bigger issues I ran into was that the game’s framerate becomes non-existent right before a major event happens, with every instance making me worried that the game had frozen or crashed on me (thankfully that was never the case). I should also mention here that the game does not have an autosave feature, relying entirely on a manual save, and bringing up the pause menu with the Options button does not actually pause any on-screen action.

Wattam is one of the more unique games I have played in recent memory. Its more whimsical gameplay and light-hearted tone are accompanied by a relatively darker narrative that somehow actually works with the rest of the game. The generally surreal presentation of Wattam will likely be a turn-off for some people, however fans of games such as Katamari Damacy or Noby Noby Boy should definitely seek this one out.