Make colourful blobs hold hands in bizarre puzzler Wattam, out next year
Katamari creator returns
Wattam [official site] is a puzzler from the mind of Keita Takahashi, the chap behind Katamari Damacy, which was that very fun Playstation game where you rolled around making stuff stick to you. Wattam was first announced in 2014 but there's been radio silence for a while as the game hunted for a publisher after being dropped by Sony. Now, Annapurna Interactive (of the excellent What Remains of Edith Finch) have picked it up and it's coming to PC next year.
It's a game full of characters of weird shapes and sizes: some look like bright comedy poo, others giant mouths with lolling tongues, some are just amorphous blobs. It's your job to corral them all together to solve puzzles. That means making them dance, hold hands, and climb on top of each other.
The game promises lots of "colourful explosions" that will help attract more characters to the area you're puzzling over. Each character also has its own unique melody, and you can chain them together to create happy jingles. It's got a whiff of Noby Noby Boy about it too, another of Takahashi's games that was essentially a fun playground full of entertaining things to do.
Feast your eyes on this new video, which showcases some of the oddballs that live in Wattam's world. There's no gameplay footage but it gives you a good idea of the art style and the silly tone. I, for one, loved Katamari Damacy and I'm looking forward to this one too. Plus, Robin Hunicke, who worked on Journey, is part of the Funomena team so there's a fair bit of pedigree here.