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Wattam is still alive, coming in 2018

Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi’s friendship game will be at PAX

Michael McWhertor is a journalist with more than 17 years of experience covering video games, technology, movies, TV, and entertainment.

Wattam, the next game from Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy creator Keita Takahashi and studio Funomena, is coming to consoles and PC next year. The game about a green, cube-shaped mayor unlocking new friends has been picked up by publisher Annapurna Interactive, after Sony dropped the title.

Annapurna Interactive and Funomena will show the latest version of Wattam at PAX West in Seattle this weekend.

Wattam was first shown in 2014. The game debuted at PlayStation Experience that year in the form of a teaser trailer. We played it the following year at a pre-E3 event.

According to Takahashi and producer Jeb Alvarado, Wattam has been rebuilt from the ground up over the past few years. The version of the game we played in 2015 was just a demo, Takahashi and Alvarado said in an interview with Polygon, and the new version is much more robust in terms of gameplay. Alvarado used the adjective “beefier.”

Wattam is still about making friends through puzzle-solving. The mayor will befriend flowers, rocks, toilets, stalks of broccoli, multicolored swirls of poop and so on. You can control everyone and everything, Takahashi said. Friendships are formed and new friends are revealed in invigorating, colorful explosions. Only now, Alvarado said, the explosions are “juicier” than before.

Takahashi said that after the game lost support at Sony, he considered ending his work on Wattam. “But you know the game is not only mine,” he said. “It’s a teamwork, lots of people have made Wattam ... I couldn’t just stop making it ...”

“I’m always trying to make a game [that] makes people notice how our ordinary life is great,” Takahashi said. “Wattam also has that same feeling.”

PAX West attendees will get to play a new version of the game at Annapurna Interactive’s booth this weekend. Expect that build of the game to showcase refined game mechanics and a host of playable, collectible pals.

The next level of puzzles.

Take a break from your day by playing a puzzle or two! We’ve got SpellTower, Typeshift, crosswords, and more.

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