Previews

GDC 2016: Tap My Katamari turns the barmy ball-rolling epic into a slick mobile clicker

Keep your fingers off my Katamari...

GDC 2016: Tap My Katamari turns the barmy ball-rolling epic into a slick mobile clicker
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| Tap My Katamari
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When Bandai Namco's new Vancouver studio decided it wanted to make a clicker game for mobile, it had to decide which Namco IP would work best. Could it make a Soul Calibur clicker? Or a Pac-Man clicker? Or how about a Ridge Racer clicker?

Looking back on it now, the choice was obvious: clickers are all about progressing and getting bigger, and weirdo magic-sticky-ball sim Katamari Damacy is also all about progessing and getting bigger. It's a match made in heaven.

So Tap My Katamari - currently in soft launch and going global later this year on iOS and Android - is all about tapping on the screen to roll a few centimetres (then metres, then kilometres, then…) towards the next item you must consume into your mad ultra-adhesive ball. You'll start by rolling up sellotape and staplers in a house, but end up grabbing bridges and buildings.

Katamari

As always with these games, you'll soon unlock stuff to click the screen for you when you're not playing. Here, it's the Prince's cousins who each have unique powers. Plus, you can go in and tweak each cousin individually to best optimise your Katamari-clicking operation.

The most interesting thing about this game is that you can trade in your Katamari to the King of all Cosmos. This will kick you back to the beginning of the game but you'll have loads of precious stars which can spent on mega-huge upgrades that will speed up progress dramatically. Think of it like New Game + mode, or prestige-ing in Call of Duty.

So while Tap My Katamari might not be the most complex game ever made - don't count it off as simply hammering a finger on your touchscreen. There are lots of ways to customise the game and optimise your play. And even if you don't care about all that, it's still a super addictive game that will keep you rapt for a good few weeks.

Mark Brown
Mark Brown
Mark Brown is editor at large of Pocket Gamer