By Jim Drewes - October 24, 2005

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The Concept

So how does this sound as an idea for a video game for the masses?  You play as a little cartoon character with a horizontal pill-shaped head, who pushes a large ball around.  As the ball rolls over objects sufficiently smaller than itself, the objects stick to the ball.  Over time the ball grows in size and can pick up larger objects.  Thats it - end of idea.  This is precisely the idea behind Katamari Damacy, the predecessor to We Love Katamari.  Roll around, pick stuff up, get bigger.  But don't click "back" on your browser just yet, critics tend to agree that the Katamari titles are some of the most innovative and entertaining games to hit the market in years.

Almost daily a gaming op-ed piece is published lamenting the lack of innovation in the console gaming world.  These articles generally coincide with the release of yet another first-person shooter.  Katamari Damacy and We Love Katamari buck that trend.  Of course, one might argue that the simple fact that We Love Katamari is a sequel to Katamari Damacy, immediately precludes We Love Katamari from being classified as "innovative."  However, until every gamer on the planet has at least one ball-rolling game on their shelves, we choose to ignore that argument.

We Love Katamari is a beautifully simple game, appropriate for and entertaining to gamers of all ages.  Typically when something is dubbed as appropriate for all ages, it usually means that its great for kids, but adults will find it boring - this is not the case with WLK.  The reason such a simple idea makes for such a great game is because the idea is just fun.  Does moving a pie-shaped character around a board to pick up dots while avoiding ghosts sound like much fun?  Probably not, but that game (Pac-Man, for those of you who haven't picked up on that yet), was one of the most wildly popular games of all time.

Perhaps the Katamari games just need to be described a little better.  A Katamari is a ball that things can stick to.  A simple Katamari might be about the size of a ping pong ball.  If you were to roll a sticky ping pong ball into a chair, you would just run into the chair.  You wouldn't be able to stay your course and have the chair stick to you.  However, if you rolled over a paper clip, the item would most likely stick to you, and you could keep rolling around.  Now what if you rolled over a bunch of paper clips, and your stickyness transferred to the clips?  Over time, your ping pong ball would grow to the size of a tennis ball.  At that point, you might be big enough for crayons to start sticking to you.  This is basically how Katamari works.  You might start in a classroom, picking up paper clips and thumb tacks.  You may have to roll up an inclined book to get on top of a desk to collect more tiny objects.  Eventually, your ball will be so big that the book itself will stick to you.  Keep rolling and the desks and chairs will be the appropriate size to start collecting.  After a while you'll be collecting people, cars, houses, national monuments, or even entire continents.  You are then scored on how large you were able to become in a given amount of time, or how quickly you were able to grow to a certain size.

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