Wattam Reviews

Wattam should be played, if for no other reason than to see a designer expressing ambivalence about his own ideas.

Spend a few hours winding down with its carefree sandbox or just listen to the ever catchy folksy music, and it’s just the antidote you need after a bad day, a bad year, or hell, a bad decade.

Very few game developers are as creative as the super-talented Keita Takahashi and he's at it again with yet another quirky experience.

Katamari Damancy set a certain precedent for video games, namely that they can get really weird at a moment’s notice. This trend has continued apace for the studio’s subsequent releases, leading in an unbroken path to Wattam. In some ways, this is the jewel of their weirdness crown, a sparkling centerpiece that perfectly represents Funomena’s overall design philosophy. In other ways, Wattam is something of a letdown. In fact, the game almost isn’t weird enough.

Wattam isn’t without its flaws; in particular, the more characters you gather, the harder it is to quickly switch between them. But even when your journey’s done, there’s more than enough here to draw you back in, whether you’re tackling the game in co-op mode, hunting for those few elusive characters you’ve missed or just diving into this daft and wonderfully charming world.

Wattam is a unique and delightful experience that suffers from a few technical issues.

I’m not sure if Takahashi will ever be able to top Katamari Damacy – for my money, it’s one of the greatest video games ever made – but Wattam captures that sense of whimsy and magic in its own way. The care-free music and gosh-darn-huggable character designs make this a must-play for fans.

The most common question we see about Wattam is quite a big one: what is it, and what do you do? You may be surprised to learn that the answer is pretty straightforward. This is a game helmed by Katamari creator Keita Takahashi, so a degree of whimsical weirdness is to be expected. However, as with his other games, all the bright colours and surface-level oddness boils down to something very simple. Wattam is a game about relationships, and you spend your time holding hands, climbing on things, and joyfully exploding.

While Wattam can be a little awkward, thanks to replacing its camera stick with the simple rotation controls on the shoulder buttons, and easily beaten in three hours, it's a game that makes a strong statement that sticks in the mind.  It's easy to go from one task to another, quickly repopulating the world, but while this is happening the various restored objects are all running around in the background, playing together, having fun and inviting you to hold up a minute and join in.  Being able to switch from one character to another at any moment means there's always something to experiment with, whether that be washing everything to a shiny gold in the toilet, blowing things around with the fan or mowing pictures in the grass.  It would be nice if the AI was smart enough to do multiplayer, engaging in a nice game of frisbee with a flung flower-hat, though.  What Wattam does successfully is reinforce the idea of play, that doing silly things is fun and doing them with friends is even better.  Wattam remembers that child-like is very different from childish, and that carefree play should be as important to a grown-up adult as it was back before we all began taking things so seriously.

In an industry still obsessed with lifelike visuals, gratuitous violence, and tear-jerking stories, Wattam is a welcome remedy. Though short-lived and bizarre is its design, it has a joyous cleansing effect that will have you grinning ear to ear.

Designer Keita Takahashi exploded our consciousness in the PlayStation 2 era with the release of Katamari Damacy. He may not be the most prolific creator out there, but his creations are memorable for both their simple aesthetics and strange, almost alien gameplay conceits. Is rolling a giant, sticky ball around enjoyable? Sure! And even if I didn’t ultimately understand the point of Katamary Damacy’s follow up, Noby Noby Boy, stretching my character around its colorful world was fun for a while. Wattam offers more structure than some of his more out-there experiments while still encouraging players to explore and poke around to see what they can discover.

I finished Wattam in a few hours — it’s not a long game — but I could only bring myself to play in chunks due to the many oddities and small indignities it foists on the player. I kept hoping for something to anchor the whole experience to some kind of message or resonant detail that would bring the rest of my pain into focus. But after finishing the game and writing this review, I’m still waiting.

As charmingly idiosyncratic as you’d expect from the creator of Katamari Damacy, but although the harmonious message is clear the game itself is a frustrating chore.

Wattam is a rare wonder of a game, full of hope, charm, and poop. But it's also one of the kindest games to come out all year.

While some video games have their gameyness constantly questioned, famed designer Keita Takahashi has embraced that space with his titles. Noby Noby Boy is probably his most famous of the lot as it was about eating, pooping, stretching, and feeding those stretched inches to Girl, which is more PG than it sounds. WATTAM is the oft-delayed next game in this odd, unnameable genre and has a lot of the same frustrations seemingly inherent to those games while also maintaining a similar level of charm.

Wattam is not a great video game by any definition. However, it is a great, zero-stress experience that wants to show how great friendship can be. If you’re looking for a game to test your skills or provide you with a mature narrative that makes you think, Wattam ain’t it. However, if you’re having a bad day and just want to unwind by kabooming golden poops all over your screen, Wattam is more than happy to take you under its bowler.

I absolutely adore quirky Japanese games. They make up a large portion of my personal gaming library. Some of my all-time favorites are the Katamari games from Keita Takahashi. Why rolling around collecting items in a giant ball is so damn satisfying is beyond me, but ever since I have been hooked on his colorful creations. Which is why Wattam has been front and center on my radar ever since it was announced.

Wattam is a weird and wild fever dream of a game, but it’s the most enjoyable fever dream I’ve ever had. Its loop of using ridiculous, anthropomorphic characters to complete simple tasks in order to gather more ridiculous, anthropomorphic characters succeeds thanks to the silly and fun situations it puts you in, even if it’s not the most complex or challenging loop to begin with. I can’t help but feel like some of the most interesting ideas Wattam uses to shake things up aren’t fully explored, but being a part of this friendly world, however briefly, is a true joy.