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Pop CultureJuly 1, 2016

This Week I Played: Tap My Katamari Endless Cosmic Clicker!

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The King of the Cosmos intends to build a planet. Joseph Harper answers his call and discovers and terrifying yet thrilling cosmic techno nightmare.

Finally the pure, unfiltered joy and weirdness of the Katamari franchise has returned to my iPhone. It’s the first Katamari game since the 2012 PS Vita game, Touch My Katamari (which I assume was cool). Everything about this thrills me. Just say the name out loud. TAP MY KATAMARI – ENDLESS COSMIC CLICKER! It’s perfect. This is the reason video games exit.

For the uninitiated, the Katamari series may seem like a load of colourful batshit nonsense. Let me assure you it is not. It’s a series of games based around the highly logical premise of rolling an adhesive ball around at the behest of the King of all the Cosmos. Your aim is to collect enough random crap on the outside of your ball to grow it from a standard ball-sized ball, into a massive otherworldly collection of crap (whales, soccer stadiums, space rockets etc). The goal is to ultimately turn it into a star or something. It also has incredible music.

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At its core, it’s a kind of snowball simulator. This Android and iOS edition plays really well and feels very true the Katamari legacy. It’s a clicker game so all you really do it tap on the screen but as you do you’ll propel your ball forth into the world and gobble up increasingly large objects. The more you tap, the bigger you get. The bigger you get, the faster you roll. But as we progress, the objects get further away from each other. If you’re a cellphone gamer type, you’ve probably played clicker games. They’re super popular at the moment because they’re super simple and extremely addictive. Some would say they’re boring as hell, but the sense of satisfaction you get when you level up in these types of games is very real and reason enough to keep playing. In Tap My Katamari – Endless Cosmic Clicker you earn coins that can be spend on little helper guys who will roll the ball for you so you don’t even need to do the clicking. It’s some Henry Ford type stuff that is super evil but also a lot of fun.

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The real pull here though is the aesthetic world of Katamari. As your little green Prince trudges along with his ball, he never breaks a sweat. The King of all the Cosmos will vomit rainbow treasure chests in your lap. Your cousins float beside you on clouds. The world around you is all diagonal lines and technicolour. It’s all extremely great and worthy of a spot on your phone.


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