All we know about Keita Takahashi’s latest game Wattam is that it’s about making connections. But a recent event on a rooftop in Los Angeles saw Takahashi showing off Wattam to the press for the first time and Venture Beat was there to bring us the first brief look at the game.
Wattam is the kind of game you’d expect from the creator of Noby Noby Boy and Katamari Damacy. As you can see in first screenshot from it above, it features a number of happy looking characters, all of who have different forms that range from teacups and mushrooms to cubes and flowers.
When you start playing Wattam, you’re presented with a few of these different characters, all with their own name, and who come to life as you interact with them, getting shinier and shinier while they play with you. In the demo shown at the event, you got a lawnmower soon after this starting point, and were able to mow the grass, flowers, and other objects.
After a while of toying around with the characters you’re able to have them link hands. Once you have 10 of them joined together, the mayor – the green cube with the bowler hat – lifts his hat and sets off the bomb underneath it. When the bomb explodes all of the characters are flung into the air. As the characters sailed upwards like fireworks, they soon float back down to find another character has joined them, drawn by the explosive activity.
Takahashi got the idea for Wattam when playing with his two-year-old son (who is now four-years-old). His fellow game designer and co-founder of the studio Funomena, Robin Hunicke (who previously worked at thatgamecompany on Journey), sums up the basic concept behind it as being “about how the world is made better when people are friends.”
Apparently, Takahashi felt like people are too disconnected from each other and wanted to encourage the idea of holding hands and playing. Presumably, then, playing with the characters in the game and having them hold hands leads to new discoveries, such as the new character that arrived at the end of the demo.
Wattam will be coming to PlayStation 4 whenever it’s finished.
