Wattam Is Still Basically Pure Joy

Last year the world was introduced to Wattam. Wattam comes from the mind of Keita Takahashi, the creator of the extraordinarily good Katamari series. Rather than rolling up the world and eventually recreating the stars that your layabout father has destroyed, Wattam is about something far more relatable. Wattam is a game in which you play as a Mayor who is trying to fix the world by making new connections. Basically, it’s about making friends, holding hands, and improving the world.

It’s an odd game, one that plays unlike anything else. You hold hands with other things, you make friends with them and help them solve their problems, and ultimately, you heal the entire world. Messages like this can often be overblown or a little too on the nose, but there’s something intensely whimsical about Wattam, and I think that’s what makes it so enjoyable. It’s just so wonderful in its simplicity, and it’s a game that I think may have missed people when it came out.

Also, alongside all of this wholesomeness, you can eat things and turn them into poop and them unturn them into poop. It’s got the same absurdist streak as all of Takahashi’s other works, and it’ll bring a wonderfully pure smile to your face because of it. I don’t know if it’ll help you deal with the stresses that life keeps on throwing our way this year, but I think that it might, and I think that’s a good enough reason to recommend it to you.