Katamari Damacy is a remaster of the quirky, ball-rolling PS2 game. It gets off to a bad start by having the game windowed and making you play a tutorial to get to the options screen so you can adjust the resolution and maybe change the controls. I didn’t notice any other problems with this version.
If you play with a controller, you use the Thumbsticks. Push them both forward to move forward, opposite directions turn e.g. back on the left, forward on right makes you turn left. There’s some other maneuvers like quick-turn and boost but I rarely used them.
The game has a low-poly graphical style with a nice colour palette. It’s very Japanese with its presentation and the music is quite interesting. I liked the beatbox/a capella beatbox theme.
The King Of All Cosmos destroys the stars and moon with his drunken antics. He gives the Little Prince a challenge to collect items on Earth which can help reconstruct the stars.
There’s loads of objects in each level, and it is quite impressive how much variety they put in across the leves. There’s all kinds of household items, plants, vehicles, animals, humans, buildings and more. It’s partly a collectathon since items are catalogued and you can view your collection. Some animals and people will charge at you, but if you are large enough, they run away.
In each level, you roll a ball called a Katamari over objects to attach them to your ball and increase its size. The limitation is that you can only collect smaller items but sometimes it's not clear. For example, you pick up an elephant but then can’t pick up a tree even though the tree looked smaller/less mass. If you hit objects with force, then you will drop objects. If you are nearly the correct size, you will tend to pass through or lightly bounce against them.
The camera zooms out as you grow and it’s quite satisfying to remember just how small you were at the start of the level, and struggle to get up small ramps. Now you are big and can just roll over them. It’s also really satisfying when you get large enough to pick up that object that was causing you a problem; like you are getting revenge for bouncing you about earlier.
You’ll fail some levels so will have to replay them. It’s mainly a casual game but some levels can be frustrating for this reason. Other frustrating moments are when you momentarily get stuck on objects. Time is ticking and you lose objects while trying to dislodge. Sometimes when you fail a level, you seem to be way off the target size, but you were probably closer to the goal than you think. You often have exponential growth when you are big, because you will be rolling up entire buildings and gaining metres in size per object.
Each level has a longer time limit, but requires a larger size to complete. Once you reach the target you play until the timer finishes to obtain a higher score. On the final level, you start on a large island, but then eventually get large enough to pick up entire islands. It feels like a lot of work on that level, but it’s a lot of carnage when you get there.
There are special stages where you have to collect a certain type of item, or some where you only collect one thing which ends the stage. So you are supposed to collect objects to grow bigger, then pick up a large version of the specific object. However, it's so easy to grab a small object that you didn’t notice, or a sign that has a picture of that object. You don’t really fail these special stages, but are encouraged to replay them to do better.
There’s some reused environments but you usually see it from a different perspective, or start in a nearby area and see how it connects to the previous one. It takes around 5.5 hours to complete but you can replay the levels to gain high scores. I felt it was about the right length for the gameplay style.
It’s a quirky idea and was well implemented. There were definitely some frustrating moments so it’s hard to describe the game as pure casual.