Once Upon A Katamari Shows Me There Is Peace In Chaos

The Katamari games have always been described to me as an incredibly chill experience. Songs like Lonely Rolling Star kind of escaped containment and painted this chilled out world where it's just you, rolling a ball into the cosmos.

Once Upon A Katamari seems to be a dramatic escalation of the game's bizarre setting. Now, you're rollin' across time itself, hitting up different eras with a soon-to-be-not-tiny ball.

Listen, reader. I don't know what I was expecting with a premise like this. But Katamari's overwhelming personality hit me like a truck. In one level, I was in Ancient Greece and asked to help organize a meeting of the great philosophical minds. Then, the King shows up and suggests the best way to gather them: roll them up into a Katamari. After gathering the 5, the original client shows up, only for the King decide maybe he should be rolled up too.

The best bit? All these philosophers are named. It's a level of dedication to the bit I can't help but smile at as I'm running around turning the brightest minds into a giant sphere.

Once Upon A Katamari producer Ishida Ryo had highlighted this kind of manic chaos specifically as the appeal of the game.

"Rather than say it's a completely chill game, it's a game that also has chaos. You're just rolling around and picking things up", he says.

"There's a lot of interesting things. There's parts of this that would provide interest", he explains. There's a lot of things that provide a fun aspect to it. It's a really weird world. It's a universe where people are able to experience this weird world at their own pace".

Doing Things For The Fun Of It In Once Upon A Katamari

Part of the newly added chaos comes from things like items- you can strap rockets to your Katamari, boosting and bouncing off walls as you grab everything you can. Prize-winning Tuna? Into the sphere. Tyrannosaurus Rex? Sphere, baby.

"The main concept behind i[the different settings] was simply because it was interesting", Ryo says.

"In the Katamari World, if you could pick up a dinosaur, or what if the terrain was purely ice? It gives a whole new fun as well as interest to the players in that they can roll around in these random time periods and stages that allows them to experience it and have fun just rolling around without thinking too much and experience different types of floors and areas and environments", he adds.

That's very much the flow of Once Upon A Katamari. It's simple in its premise, but every stage consumes you with its presence. What do you mean I'm now in Shinjuku picking up sweets off the floor and avoiding un-sweet foods for fear of ruining my Katamari while a song that's giving Daoko is playing in the background?

It's not just the individual stages, either- it's the whiplash of going between them. No two settings feel the same, be it in presentation or things to do. Given you're free to move between these stages at your leisure, you can experience every stage as you wish.

There's enough mission types for each setting to lose an afternoon in, too. From simple missions like getting as big as possible in the time limit to specific challenge ones like the aforementioned philosopher abduction, you'd be surprised how many different rules you could attach to rolling a ball around. There's been some progress in transparency, though- you can see your current ranking in these missions, letting you know if you're making good progress or due for an earful from the King for your incompetence.

Once Upon A Katamari is absolutely enrapturing with its presence, combining generationally-refined sphere fundamentals with plenty of new gimmicks and features. Heck, there's even multiplayer where you can opt to start with a big Katamari that gets progressively smaller and run over your friends.

If you like your games weird and with immaculate presence, Once Upon A Katamari feels like it'll be one to look out for.