Katamari Damacy – meaning “clump spirit” – is a third-person action game that involves rolling-up items onto a ball called a ‘Katamari‘. You play as ‘The Prince‘ – a small, green boy who is the son of ‘The King of All Cosmos‘ and who pushes the Katamari around the landscape, making items stick to it, which in turn makes it grow in size. The aim of the game is roll-up a Katamari of a certain size in each of the game’s various levels.

The King has inadvertently made all the stars in the universe disappear and it becomes The Prince’s job to roll things up so that his various Katamaris can become stars again, thus: restoring the universe back to normal again.

Actually, if there’s one thing Katamari Damacy isn’t, it’s “normal“. This game is wonderfully imaginitive, with brilliant design and animation, and with a superb soundtrack. And it can be played single or multiplayer.

Katamari Damacy is a must-play game on the PlayStation 2, and – alongside its sequel (We Love Katamari) – it is one of my favourite games of all-time. It has a wonderful, family-friendly Japanese weirdness to it, while at the same time being challenging and hugely fun to play. There really isn’t much else like it.

Katamari Damacy was developed and published by Namco in 2004. A high-definition remaster of the game, Katamari Damacy Reroll, was released on Windows and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, and on PS4 in 2020.

More: Katamari Damacy on Wikipedia
More: Katamari Damacy Reroll on Steam