2023 has been a bountiful year for fans of Keita Takahashi’s Katamari Damacy, one of the most idiosyncratic game series of all time, with some of the best recently released on Steam. Katamari started on a small scale by rolling up paper clips, erasers and fruit into balls, as the prince of all universes, under the watchful eye of Papa, the prince of all universes. Then scale up to cars, trees, etc. eventually the entire city block. It may sound a little strange, but all this adds up to what can only be described as a sincere and moving ode to the joy of play and the innocence of childhood (really).
This is a special game and it’s clear someone at Google loves it as much as I do.
Google incorporates the Katamari mini-game into its ubiquitous search engine. You can start rolling a ball around the search results page, gradually increasing the size of the ball with text and buttons, and then paste things like images. In fact, it’s a bit like an OCD magnet. Because once you get going, I really don’t see how you can walk away unless the page is wonderfully blank and everything is part of your ball.
To access the game, type “Katamari Damacy” into a Google search and you’ll see the same results page as usual. But in the upper right is a colorful ball that starts to wobble asking for clicks. Click to start the game. Move the ball with the arrow keys and zoom in on all Google services and widgets.
“Katamari Damacy is a nostalgic game for many of us and has many fans.” Google engineer Lucas Bren told Kotaku. “The recognizable game mechanic of attaching items to a rolling katamari is so fun and unique that we wanted to see how it interacts with the search page and give fans the chance to play with katamari outside of the game.”
Bullen said Google has easter eggs for other games for players to find, and suggests searching for “Star Fox” and “The Last of Us.”
We Love Katamari Reroll+ Royal Reverie is a recent Steam release of the second game in the series and my favorite (the first game, Katamari Damacy, Released on PC in 2018). “Namco made a few more Katamari Souls games after this without series creator Keita Takahashi’s involvement, but this was definitely the peak,” our Wes Fenron rightly said. “It adds mission variety and other playable characters, and includes an interesting meta-story about Katamari Damacy being so popular that it needs to be redone.”
These games are fun and Google’s little tribute is a nice change of pace in the office.Additionally, the Prince rolled across the United States and eventually googleplex The final level saves us all from the inevitable near-future where AI-generated websites destroy what little value remains in Google Search.
