If you’ve been reading my stuff for a while, you’ll know I really like the Katamari Games. As such I was super excited to hear that Keita Takahashi would be releasing Wattam in time for the new year (happy new year btw). From the trailers I knew very little, apart from that it would have a similar graphical style to the Takahashi’s other games, and that it involved holding hands.
Wattam plonks you into a dark world with only a sad looking green cube friend who wears a black hat and has confusing facial features (everyone’s nose looks kinda like a cat’s mouth so the mouth below that makes for some mental gymnastics while playing). The cube – introduced as Mayor, has lost their memory and must explore the world around them, meeting a rapidly expanding cast of brightly coloured and simply designed companions. Friends such as orange flower, acorn, squid, boat, telephone & toilet.
Taking your first steps in the world of Wattam, you’re given a basic tutorial, introducing the abilities of holding hands with others, moving the red arrow (which points to whichever character you want to control), climb on people, and (as Mayor) doff your hat to create a small explosive gift box and blast anyone nearby into the air, laughing joyously.
While blowing up your friends is generally frowned upon in real life, everyone seems really happy about it in Wattam.
There’s a real joy to experimenting with this world. You’ll be taught early on that trees can eat people and turn them into fruit (we got you vore crowd, it’s all harmless fun here). Mouth, on the other hand, can eat fruit and turn it into coiled piles of poop (buzzing flies and all). At this point a tree could eat them again and turn them back to their original form, even if toilet got to them they could end up gold plated (the toilet is ever hungry for poops).
While this is all silly fun, I did struggle a bit in the late game, when I needed to find particular friends for a puzzle but could only find a box of sweet potato fries where I’d hoped to find an octopus and having completely forgotten about changing people’s forms as it had been a few days between plays. This is where Wattam’s explanation-light approach can become an issue, because it’s never explicitly stated that the collection menu can tell you both what form a friend is in right now, and what their normal state is. That said, it was only for one puzzle that I was struggling and only at the very end of winter.
Speaking of the collection screen, there’s a lot of silliness to find here too. Much like Donut County’s Trashopedia, each of the characters have an intro screen showing brief descriptions of them. This changes as they change form, so it’s worth checking back here a few times, to get the full experience.
Scale takes a role in this world, much like Katamari Damacy. When you’re zoomed in, you’ll be controlling characters around Mayor’s size. However, as you zoom out, you’ll take over some of the arriving friends such as the boat, a larger toilet, or bowling alley. These more grand characters can ferry others across the sea of clouds that makes up the wider world, taking them to visit main islands, each based on the seasons.
The music of Wattam is the kind of gentle and jolly tunes Keita Takahashi’s games are well know for. There’s plenty of acapella to “la-la laaa” along to and there’s almost always the sound of laughter and play from the other visitors to each island.
As you progress through the game, you learn more of the overarching plot through a series of simple vignettes. Why was the rainbow destroyed? Who is the mysterious, horned figure? What happened to the world?
At its core, Wattam is a simple game of exploration, experimentation, and puzzle solving. There’s a simple joy to helping one of your companions, being rewarded with the arrival of a new friend who in turn ferries in a number of smaller friends for you to interact as, or help through a difficulty. Be that helping seeds to grow into trees, getting a telephone receiver back from the sun, or stacking a group of friends up until you’re the same height as a bowling pin (for some reason).
Despite some of the more scatalogical aspects of the game, I found it packed with charm and simple delights and was regularly giggling away at the sheer joy of the world as I took the hand of a new friend and explored the vibrant and expanding world. It might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but if you like weird, puzzly, colourful fun, and the sound of joyous laughter, you could do a lot worse than Wattam.
Pros:
- Really Charming
- Colourful
- Original
Cons:
- Nearly glitched the game to death when steering an explosion for a prolonged period
- Some slow down in places
- Camera controls are a bit clunky
Stoned Monkey Radio 