I think my favorite part of this game was when I was reading everyones lil profiles in the Collection screen (and not playing it)
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Usually I have several thoughts to sort through but I think theres only really 2 very broad thoughts to have about Wattam:
- Very obviously, it is Keita Takahashi on full blast. Its full of silly, colorful objects that all have his now-signature face-doodles on them. The presentation is charming, the scenarios are creative and have a clear sense of humor. You turn things into poop within like the first 10 minutes. Giant picnic tables come swimming through the sky at you. The main character is named Mayor and he has the power to pull bombs out of his hat whenever he wants. There is also alot of more subtle visual humor thats hard to relate here cuz its so frequent but the expressiveness it brings to the game is hard to ignore. The game is funny
- Less apparent until you actually boot up the game, but Wattam doesnt feel good, at all. One of those contributing factors is the animation-first movement, where the character behavior is way more important than player control. The biggest issue tho is camera control, where 20% of the time youre left with really frigid shoulder button movement and the other 80% the game is wresting the camera away from you to show you something. There will be times where youre fighting with the game to get one of your cute little guys to stop rolling on the ground and the camera is ripped away from you to show you a very, very…… zzzz… very slow series of actions another character is doing somewhere else. For a game thats very charming and buzzing with like an innocent kind of enthusiasm, playing it makes me feel like Im in prison, not allowed to have any of that fun myself. I do as Im told, I get out of the way of the game, I let it do its thing and I have the privilege to watch.
It might be easy to say “This was a game probably intended for children” as a way to dismiss the criticism of how its structured - but I would argue that is a very poor opinion of children. Children deserve good games, good feeling games too. I dont know if you played games when you were a kid, or if youve ever witnessed a kid trying to play games, but games are very frustrating experiences for children. No matter how simple the subject matter is, kids still have to deal with the foreign concepts of “controllers” and “mechanics” to be able to engage with the material - and Wattam is the worst game on that front. I cant imagine a more frustrating game to hand a kid.
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Usually I have several thoughts to sort through but I think theres only really 2 very broad thoughts to have about Wattam:
- Very obviously, it is Keita Takahashi on full blast. Its full of silly, colorful objects that all have his now-signature face-doodles on them. The presentation is charming, the scenarios are creative and have a clear sense of humor. You turn things into poop within like the first 10 minutes. Giant picnic tables come swimming through the sky at you. The main character is named Mayor and he has the power to pull bombs out of his hat whenever he wants. There is also alot of more subtle visual humor thats hard to relate here cuz its so frequent but the expressiveness it brings to the game is hard to ignore. The game is funny
- Less apparent until you actually boot up the game, but Wattam doesnt feel good, at all. One of those contributing factors is the animation-first movement, where the character behavior is way more important than player control. The biggest issue tho is camera control, where 20% of the time youre left with really frigid shoulder button movement and the other 80% the game is wresting the camera away from you to show you something. There will be times where youre fighting with the game to get one of your cute little guys to stop rolling on the ground and the camera is ripped away from you to show you a very, very…… zzzz… very slow series of actions another character is doing somewhere else. For a game thats very charming and buzzing with like an innocent kind of enthusiasm, playing it makes me feel like Im in prison, not allowed to have any of that fun myself. I do as Im told, I get out of the way of the game, I let it do its thing and I have the privilege to watch.
It might be easy to say “This was a game probably intended for children” as a way to dismiss the criticism of how its structured - but I would argue that is a very poor opinion of children. Children deserve good games, good feeling games too. I dont know if you played games when you were a kid, or if youve ever witnessed a kid trying to play games, but games are very frustrating experiences for children. No matter how simple the subject matter is, kids still have to deal with the foreign concepts of “controllers” and “mechanics” to be able to engage with the material - and Wattam is the worst game on that front. I cant imagine a more frustrating game to hand a kid.