Katamari Damacy

US box art.

Katamari Damacy is an action-heavy puzzle video game developed and published by Namco on 2004-03-18 for the PlayStation 2. In 2012, it was ported to the PlayStation 3, and, in 2018, it was remastered as Katamri Damacy: Reroll for several more platforms. In the game, you play as the two-centimeter-tall Prince of the Cosmos. The King of the Cosmos inadvertently destroyed the stars and the moon one day, and has tasked you with recreating them. You do this by rolling around a ball called a katamari which has strange properties. Any object smaller than the katamari will stick to it, making the katamari bigger, which allows even bigger things to stick to it. You begin with a tiny katamari which can only pick up thumb tacks and paperclips, but, as it grows, you're able to pick up larger things like shoes, dogs, people, cars, trees, buildings, and, eventually the very ground itself.

Personal

I remember seeing fan art of the Prince and a katamari showing up on a graphic designer's blog that I frequented not too long after the game was released in the USA, but not really knowing what it was. Awhile later, I remember watching my friend play, I believe, We Love Katamari, and thinking it was interesting. Years later, I found the game's soundtrack and enjoyed the "Katamari on the Rocks ~ Main Theme." I had meant to play the game for awhile, but, lacking a PS2 or emulator, I never did. When I saw the remastered "Reroll" version for sale on Steam, I bought it and played it intermittently over the next couple days. I beat it on 2021-01-31 earning all the achievements except for two.

Status

I own the Reroll version on Steam and have beaten it.

Review

6	4	7	7	5

Best Version: Windows

— This section contains spoilers! —

Good

• The art style is interesting. The boxy characters were no doubt necessary limitations, but they look wonderful, and the design choice for what to include was really clever. Giant squids, martial artists rolling in circles, Kiki, and so many others. The bizarre cut-scenes, strange looking people of the Cosmos, it's all just something new and interesting.
• The change in scale is wonderful. Going from picking up thumbtacks to skyscrapers is really interesting.
• The music, although totally varied in genre, makes sense. For a game this strange, you shouldn't expect to hear a boring orchestral score.
• The huge variety of items to collect is really impressive. Most of them aren't animated, but it didn't bother me.
• The ending, where you roll up the countries of the Earth, is a fun treat.
• Although people criticize the game for being too short and too repetitive, I found it to be a nice length. It ended before I got bored, and, considering it initially sold with a discounted price tag, it seemed worth the cost.
• I like how the Price is always displayed in the lower right corner of the screen showing what he's doing when he becomes too small to see. I especially like that he puts on a snorkeling mask when he goes underwater.

Bad

• I like that the designers tried for a little variety by having stages where you're trying to avoid certain things and make estimate your katamari's size, but ultimately, I found these stages less enjoyable. It's extremely difficult to avoid the myriad objects that end your run in the Taurus and Ursa Major stages, and the Polaris level just requires you to do the same thing again and again until you get good at estimating.
• Rather than have the tutorial gloss over all possible controls in a few seconds, where you're just going to forget them, the game should teach you a new move after each stage so you can learn in steps.
• I wish there was a single stage where you started at the smallest size and went to the largest size.
• In the Steam release, achievements are gained, not for doing anything special in the game, but merely for finishing each stage. This hardly feels like an achievement.

Ugly

• Nothing.

Media

Box Art

All regions used this same art with only minor changes to the layout. It shows a giant katamari ball being rolled in the distance while cows peacefully graze in a pasture. Since this game is pretty unique, it doesn't entirely illuminate what the game will be about, but it certainly gets across the point that this game is going to be unusual.

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  US box art.

Documentation

• 

  US manual.

Videos

Longplay - PS2.

Titles

Language	Native	Transliteration	Translation
Chinese (Simplified)	块魂	Kuài Hún	Clump Spirit
English	Katamari Damacy
Japanese	塊魂	Katamari Tamashi	Clump Spirit

Links