After a long drought, Katamari Damacy has finally returned to roll around planet Earth once more. On April 3, Apple Arcade subscribers will get an all-new game in Katamari Damacy Rolling Live. The iOS exclusive isn’t any sort of modern reimagining of a series that ran its course; it’s a very familiar sequel that picks up exactly where previous entries left off. It’s a treat for long-time fans who’ve just been craving more levels, wacky humor, and excellent tunes. Though as much fun as I’ve been having with it, Rolling Live is also a good reminder of why franchises like this tend to go quiet eventually: It’s easy to lose momentum when the original ideas slow down.
In Katamari Damacy Rolling Live, the King of the Cosmos decides to become a live streamer. Why? I don’t know, the guy just does things like this sometimes. He tasks The Prince with once again rolling up stars for his live streams, helping him grow an audience of fans. I wouldn’t blame anyone who finds the concept a little cringe-inducing (especially as the King of the Cosmos drops dated slang like “YOLO”), but it’s kind of a genius premise. Katamari games are all about exponential growth. You start with a tiny ball and then make it bigger and bigger by rolling up objects. It’s a perfect metaphor for content creation, a profession that’s similarly about growing an exponentially larger following. Rolling Live gets the most out of its light satire by filling the right side of the screen with insatiable commenters — not unlike 2024’s The Crush House — demanding to see bigger stars.
While the setup is new, the gameplay here is relatively unchanged from previous entries. In each level, The Prince is tasked with carrying out a different “collab” for someone with a specific request. The earliest levels are basic enough, just asking me to have my Katamari reach a certain size by rolling up objects around a gamer’s bedroom. Other requests stress the importance of short form video in today’s media landscape and task me with hitting a certain size as quickly as possible.
While those first few missions are a good reminder of the basics, Rolling Live takes a few missions to really hit its stride. One standout mission drops me into a small concert arena and tasks me with picking up as many glowsticks as possible in a few minutes, turning my Katamari into a psycadelic disco ball. Another asks me to scrub grime off a bathroom’s surfaces. When my ball gets too dirty, I need to wash it off in some nearby water or pick up soap to clean myself. Those levels are consistently the standouts here, reimagining what a Katamari level looks like in a way that feels better suited to mobile devices and short play sessions.
It’s as I play the more traditional levels, where I’m hitting certain star sizes within an eight minute timeframe, that I start to understand why it’s likely been so long since we’ve gotten a Katamari Damacy game. When the series debuted in 2004, its strength was its originality. There was absolutely nothing like it at the time, which made it such a delight to discover. It’s not that the magic disappeared with each new entry, but it certainly lost a bit of its luster each time as it struggled to iterate. Rolling Live doesn’t exactly solve that problem; it may as well be a direct sequel to the PS2 original, right down to its faithfully blocky art direction.
But what it does have on its side is time. It’s just been so long since we’ve gotten a new entry in this series that it feels refreshing to revisit the formula rather than obligatory. Maybe its for the best that franchises like this take a decade off between games as its creators experiment with new ideas (look at Katamari creator Keita Takahashi’s upcoming To a T, for proof of that).
It’s not a perfect comeback, mind you. Its biggest struggle comes from cracking touch controls for a mobile screen. The Katamari games have always been about wrestling with awkward controls to an extent and there’s a joy in mastering that tricky style of play. Still, I’ve struggled to fully crack the touch controls here even with four different schemes. The one I’ve found the most luck with has me using two “thumbsticks” like I would on a controller, but I’ve found it tough to juggle that with unwieldy camera control. Other control schemes like “Swipe” and “Drive” just haven’t clicked for me, and the single stick option feels similarly tough to master. Worst of all, my right thumb just entirely covers the chat while I’m playing, meaning that I’m missing all of Rolling Live‘s best jokes when I play like that. You’ll want to use a controller for this, trust me.
More successful is Rolling Live‘s unlockables and multi-layered progression system. I’m encouraged to try missions again to aim for higher goals that will increase my audience and help me unlock more missions. The more I “stream,” the more I collect audience members who will comment if I pick up certain items (a King Tut-like character goes wild every time I roll up some gold). When they’ve commented enough times, they’ll give me candy that can be spent on cosmetic items. It’s a nice loop that gets a lot out of mileage a handful of levels without turning the game into an obsessive live service grind. It’s still Katamari, and that’s its best quality.
While it’s a shame that the series’ first entry in nearly a decade is locked to single subscription platform, I’m at least glad to see Apple willing to give Katamari a home. At this point, it feels like Arcade is becoming a go-to home for classic, oddball franchises that just no longer fit into the AAA landscape. I’ve loved watching series like Puyo Puyo and ChuChu Rocket get a second wind on Apple Arcade since it started. It’s a platform for gaming’s greatest misfits, and Katamari Damacy Rolling Live is the king of them.
Katamari Damacy Rolling Live launches on April 3 for iOS devices via Apple Arcade.
Read the full article here
