In the slightly barren early years of weird video games, one game stood tall above the rest as an icon for all of us young sickos to flock to. That game was Katamari Damacy, and it gained enough of a cult following to create a weird series of games spanning decades. Katamari rolled so that so many bizarre indies nowadays could run, and I’ll never turn down an opportunity to have a ball with The King of all Cosmos and company. It’s been fourteen years since we got an entirely new Katamari game, and I was starting to lose hope that it’d ever happen. Then out of nowhere Once Upon a Katamari came along, and might be my new favourite game in the series.
Like all Katamari games, the opening involves the universe being destroyed, this time by the King showing off with a scroll. Because of this the universe needs some new planets, which you my dear Prince will create by rolling up objects. I doubt you’d really go into a new Katamari game expecting a meaningful narrative, but the characters are as full of charm as ever.
There’s a brief tutorial that’ll teach you how to roll with the best of them, but again veteran rollers will feel right at home moving around the environments. There are multiple control schemes for traditionalists and people who want more normal controls, but whatever options you choose you’ll be moving a ball around and collecting as many bits as possible.
If Once Upon a Katamari is your first foray into this world then the concept is very simple: you have a ball (or Katamari) which rolls up objects and collects them as long as they’re not too big. The aim of each stage (for the most part) is to make your Katamari as big as possible by scooping up bigger and bigger objects. Starting by grabbing tiny rice balls and pennies only to eventually start sticking people and elephants to your ball never ceases to be incredibly satisfying, especially as you get to see the rainbow explosion of silly objects form and get little facts about its current size.
This is how the more basic stages in Katamari games function, but Once Upon a Katamari has plenty more tricks up its sleeve. An early wild west stage challenges you to pick up a certain number of beverages as fast as you can, whereas a stage set in a Japanese teahouse is all about scooping up the most valuable items possible. It’s a really fun way to keep this particularly chunky Katamari game interesting, and makes the stages more fun for score chasing especially.
There really isn’t much more to talk about mechanically regarding Once Upon a Katamari. It features plenty of hidden collectibles like special crowns and unlockable characters (who are just reskins of the Prince, albeit very cute ones). There are also power-ups which help the rolling process, which I can’t remember seeing in previous games, like a giant magnet that sucks up loads of nearby items.
There’s just a certain unmatched joy that these daft games do better than anything else. The carefully constructed environments ensure a variety of fun cultural items can be rolled up on this tour of different periods in history, and that there are paths to discover to do so most effectively. Replaying stages is a joy because you’ll slowly learn better ways to grow, and because of this will get even higher scores. I don’t think there’s a better crafted Katamari game than this one, in terms of the environments themselves and the variety of stages in this massive package.
Another huge part of what makes Katamari special are the visuals and music, and in Once Upon a Katamari that’s no exception. The lo-fi visuals are just vibrant and full of wonder as past titles, and although not the most technically impressive graphics you’ll ever see, they really warm my heart. The audio is utterly bizarre this time around (even by series standards) with particularly catchy J-Pop mixed with all sorts of bizarre noises. It’s weird, wonderful, and I wouldn’t want it any other way.
Despite everything I love about this new and delightful Katamari game, it does have a few minor issues that hold it back from being an all time classic. Certain objectives are just nowhere near as much fun as madly rolling up an entire map, and would cause me to roll my eyes instead of crying tears of joy from them. The variety also falls a little flat sometimes, as more and more feudal Japan levels unlock instead of the more novel options. I’m clutching at straws a bit here though, because in most ways this is a new high bar for the series.
Once Upon a Katamari might well be the best Katamari game ever made, with loads of content and variety packed into its spherical package. Decades on it turns out rolling up objects is still as fun as ever, and thanks to the expertly crafted levels and different objectives you’ll face it never gets old. If this is what all new Katamari games are going to look like then I want more already, because Once Upon a Katamari is a very special game.
