Keita Takahashi—the artist and playground designer behind Katamari Damacy—and the developers at Funomena introduced their new game Wattam last December with a silly, wordless video about a green cube man, known as the Mayor, and the bomb that lives under his bowler hat. It established the game’s fanciful tone and adorable character design, but it didn’t tell us much about Wattam. Fortunately, the studio is gearing up to debut its PlayStation 4 exclusive in earnest at this month’s E3 trade show and has released footage of the game in action. After several viewings of this latest teaser, Wattam is still as confounding as before.
Considering Takahashi’s last commercial game was about a monster who digested everything in sight to appease its mysterious cosmic overlord, it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Wattam looks, at first blush, like little more than history’s most pleasant, pastel-colored drug trip. According to a Polygon report from a pre-E3 preview event, the idea is to make Wattam’s cast of characters hold hands so you can activate their abilities and affect the game world. Holding hands with a sentient cloud, for example, makes it rain and causes playable flowers to appear. Once you’ve roused enough characters, you gather them in one spot and blow them up with the Mayor’s bomb, which introduces even more friends and toys to play with. Or you can just lay down some fresh beats as Scott The Turntable and make sushi dance for eternity.