'Wattam' is a life-affirming reminder of why video games and play matter
Who knew one of my most beloved video game characters of the decade would end up being **checks notes** a golden poo?
But that's Wattam in a nutshell: a golden surprise able to find delight in the least expected places (which, metaphor aside, is not a cheeky way of calling it a piece of shit).
Wattam is the latest game from Keita Takahashi, the renowned creator behind Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy. Four years in the making, it bares all the same idiosyncratic heart, sincerity, and wonder of its predecessors. But arriving at the end of December, this life-affirming friendship simulator comes in too late to make most Game of the Year or Best Games of the Decade lists.
You May Also Like
That's real a shame because Wattam absolutely does not deserve to be forgotten. And if you play it for even just five minutes, I doubt you'll forget it.
Like most of Takahashi's games, Wattam is unlike anything else you've played before. Yet, it's also the epitome of what video games can be when they're at their very best.
The concept of "play" is stripped down to its purest form here, as you inhabit any one of the random anthropomorphized objects — including everything from a mouth, a poo, a telephone, and the sun — to make friends with each other. Together you solve a number of puzzles that fix everyone's individual problems, each "player" (or object) contributing its unique skill or fulfilling an important role in reaching the solution.
Don't be fooled into thinking it's only for the sake of frivolity, though. In Wattam, it's all fun and games so you can bring the whole world back from apocalyptic annihilation.
Wattam is impossible to describe, yet it's imbued with an unmistakable and universal humanity.
The more puzzles you solve, the more sets of objects you blink back into existence. For example, you help the Summer platform (which is also anthropomorphized) to stop crying by bringing back its lost sea, only for that to trigger a new platform to come back: Bucket! With all its associated anthropomorphized objects like Shell and Beach Ball! "WELCOME BACK BUCKET!" flashes across the screen in bubble letters because you love to see it!
What happens in Wattam is impossible to describe, yet it's imbued with an unmistakable and universal humanity.
Half the time — like when you're stacking poos on top of each other to match the height of Bowling Pin — you have no fucking idea what you're doing or why you're doing it. On top of that, it's a sandbox in the truest sense of the word. Every object has autonomy and can interact with one another on their own, making for an increasingly chaotic map of sentient poos running around with sentient birthday cake candles on top of a sentient table. At one point Fan (a literal fan) won't stop following you around obsessively alongside its friend, Camera, because you know, it's a "fan" of you. (The game is filled with world-class double entendres and puns like that.)
Yet despite having no discernible puzzle pattern, little guidance, few written words, or any reference points for how to play, you always discover the solution to each problem organically. Because play is universal. Finding the human answer to a problem is instinctual. And, many times, the solution to any given issue is a well-placed KABOOM (aka fun explosions that send everyone within proximity flying through the air).
Wattam is, bar none, one of the silliest games you'll ever play in your life. It's precisely through its unwavering commitment to silliness, though, that Wattam makes the salient case for why play and video games matter so much — and it does so better than the Very Serious Games you'll find on a Best Video Games of the Decade list.
An undercurrent of timely, sometimes even melancholic themes run through the main storyline (which takes about 4-6 hours to finish). The climate change metaphor is an obvious one, as we face the impending annihilation of our own world. You'll find yourself surprised by the nuance of its messages, though, which are far more mature than the surface level takeaway of "we can fix all the world's problems if we work together."
Wattam doesn't just paint over the ugliness of a dying world in saccharine cuteness. It confronts the dual-sidedness of human nature, the tragedy of a society that forgets its own history, and our inability to appreciate love without loss. It does all that while a bunch of poos hold hands and dance around an acorn together.
Despite its colorful appearances and unwavering dedication to fun, Wattam is also equal parts tears and (in essence) a laundry list of each anthropomorphized citizens' unhappiness. Because ultimately, happiness and togetherness is not about the absence of problems.
It's about appreciating every inch of life, in all its forms, whether typical or unusual. Some of life is beautiful. Some of it is a pile of poo. Both deserve to be embraced (metaphorically, that is).
Topics Gaming
Jess is an LA-based culture critic who covers intimacy in the digital age, from sex and relationship to weed and all media (tv, games, film, the web). Previously associate editor at Kill Screen, you can also find her words on Vice, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, Vox, and others. She is a Brazilian-Swiss American immigrant with a love for all things weird and magical.
