After Katamari Damacy became a hit creator Keita Takahashi said he was interested in making playgrounds for kids. Noby Noby Boy is Takahashi’s digital playground.
The game has no levels to beat. You control the BOY in randomly generated rooms and interact with the world. Loop the BOY inside donut shaped clouds, knock boxes into the abyss only to watch them fall from the sky, eat knights, and digest… your own tail. While you’re doing whatever it is your doing animals and the curious inhabitants might ride on you. Eating things makes the BOY grow, which similar to a massive Katamari ball is harder to control. However, this game isn’t Snakamari Damacy. It’s up to the player to use his or her imagination to make a scenarios or goals other than collecting trophies.
Well, there is a common goal in Noby Noby Boy. The game keeps track of how far your BOY stretches if you report to GIRL. See, she’s trying to get to loop around the solar system starting with the moon and it’s going to take the cumulative playing power of everyone to get her there. Once GIRL gets to the moon everyone around the world who purchased Noby Noby Boy will have new areas to play in. It’s hard to say what these are or if there are more surprises in store because we’re not there yet. What we have now include town, forest, and desert areas. Only Namco Bandai knows what surprises the moon and other planets will bring.
Complete freedom is a nice twist and because of it Noby Noby Boy is a great virtual toy. It seems like there is still much to be discovered and or discussed since figuring Noby Noby Boy out is trial and error. Some things I messed around with are entangling the trees, blasting things out of BOY’s butt to see how far I can shoot them, and morphing the people by eating them.
What have you done with your Noby Noby Boy?
