RELEASE DATE: 23 Oct, 2025
DEVELOPER: RENGAME
PUBLISHER: Bandai Namco Entertainment Inc.
Audio Transcript
If you ever look at the world and think, do you know what, things look a little bit grim, just take a second, stop, and realise we live in a world where the video game Katamari is a thing.
And it’s 2025 and we’ve got a brand new Katamari game in the excellent, and I’m just going to come straight out and say it, excellent Once Upon a Katamari, the first new Katamari game in many years.
We’ve had plenty over the years in terms of remakes, remasters, collections, that kind of thing.
For anyone who doesn’t know, Katamari is a game where you play on the prince, and your father, the kid of all cosmos, has sent you on a mission to roll up everyday objects to repopulate the stars.
That’s basically the game.
You go, you’re the prince, little tiny fella, and you push a ball along, picking up everyday items, which could end up being bits of food, dice, keys, blocks, animals, houses, cars.
The more you pick up, the bigger you grow, and yeah, that’s the game, essentially.
You get given a task of make a ball this size, or make a ball this size in this time, populate the stars, as we said, out into this great cosmos.
It’s a simple concept. It really is, and it’s just utterly brilliant.
I played my first one back on the PSP and just fell in love. I think I’ve got nigh on every release since then in some fashion. Once Upon a Katamari is pretty much the same game again, but with a few little added extras.
There’s a new hub world, and obviously a new story, but what this does is it takes you on a journey through time, hence the Once Upon a Katamari. It’s more story driven, so you start off with old Japan, you go to other places as you go, and you get different tasks before moving on.
It’s just utterly brilliant. It’s bonkers. The story’s bonkers.Full of color.Coming from that era where the likes of Sony were still producing Vib Ribbon and putting that out there, or you had Bishi Bashi Special coming through. It was just like creators took a chance, and Katamari is the epitome of that. Just utterly wonderful to play.
This version is just as good as any that have come before it. It’s better to play in many respects because being of the time of the early 2000s and slightly beyond, its controls were a bit finicky at times, so one of the things you had to do was both sticks forward to move forward, both sticks back to go back, both to the sides to move sides, etc., etc., that kind of thing.
You turn by alternate up and downs, and then to get a speed burst go, which you needed sometimes, you had to wiggle the sticks up and down. It was fine for the time, but what they’ve added is some really cool accessibility options.
Now, you still can do the stick wiggles and stuff like that, but you’ve now got the option of just holding a trigger and building it up that way, which for purists, you won’t want to do that.
I get that, but for others who need it for accessibility reasons, it’s great. For newcomers who have got used to certain ways of controls being, it’s great. That needs to be there.
I went back and played me and my Katamari, and it obviously still holds up today. But compared to this, the quality of life improvements in this are well worth it, and it makes it a special, special game. And it’s highly recommended to anyone who’s played a Katamari.
You definitely need to pick this up. It’s out at £35 on pretty much everything, I think. I’m playing it on Steam with It running flawlessly on Steam Deck, which is also verified, I believe.
The whole game is just wonderful. If you enjoy this, go back and try and pick up the old ones as well. But Once Upon a Katamari is absolutely fantastic and a complete must-have.
The end of 2025 is showing no signs of letting up, because we’ve just got utter brilliance.
