Physical Prototype of a Digital Game - Katamari Damacy
For our paper prototype of Katamari Damacy, we focused on the two main aspects of the game: rolling the Katamari and picking up objects.
The Katamari is represented by a Styrofoam ball covered in felt, and the objects are represented by small pieces of cardboard covered in Velcro. In the digital game, the player's goal is measured by the diameter of their Katamari and attached objects. Getting the objects to attach to the felt ball in a uniform way like they do in the game proved fairly difficult, with the pieces more so building on top of each other rather than spreading around the ball. Because of this, we opted to go for a player vs. player route on the paper model, a mode that is in fact included in the original game. Instead of measuring by diameter, the winner is determined by who has more pieces on their ball.
Players roll the ball around with two hands across the playing field (poster boards with spots to lay down the items), and play!
High Concept
Roll a ball (Katamari) and collect as many objects as possible. Start by collecting small objects and gain speed and diameter to collect larger ones. Keep collecting and get your katamari as big as possible!
Overview:
Player Motivation: The player is collecting items in their Katamari by exploring worlds to help rebuild the Cosmos.
Genre: The genre is third-person puzzle-action.
License: The game is not intended to exploit a licensed property.
Target Audience: Single-player audiences of ages eight and up, though a simple multiplayer mode is also present. Age nor sex is relevant, just that the player enjoys puzzle-action games or enjoyed similar games such as OmniBus and Agar.io. Since the mechanics of the game are relatively simple, almost anyone can pick it up and have an enjoyable time.
Competition: Katamari Damacy is similar to OmniBus and Agar.io except it takes the goal of both and combines it into a better game. OmniBus is focused on a bus destroying its surroundings and wreaking havoc for as long as possible without tipping over. Agar.io is about being a cell that must consume smaller cells to become bigger. Katamari Damacy is controlling a Katamari to wreak havoc and collect objects to become bigger, all while having a pleasant graphical and musical aesthetic.
Unique Selling Points: Simplistic, comedy in an action-puzzle game, graphical and musical aesthetics.
Target Hardware: PlayStation 2 (Original) and Nintendo Switch (Remaster)
Design Goals
Novelty: The game was purely inspired by rolling around a rice ball, something that no one thought could be fun.
Ease of Understanding: Simple controls and goals make this an easy game to learn and play.
Enjoyment: The game’s simple objectives, aesthetic, and visible progression are enjoyable to anyone who plays the game.
Humor: Dialogue exchanged towards the player has moments where the player will laugh. Players may also get a kick out of attaching animals and people to their Katamari.
MDA Analysis
Mechanics
Rules and concepts, code level
Behind its bizarre, celestial backstory, Katamari Damacy has a relatively simple concept when it comes to gameplay. Your character, who is a prince, is tasked with rolling a ball around (a Katamari) and gathering loose items that are smaller than it. The Katamari must start increasing in size in order to be able to pick up larger items. To control the direction the Katamari rolls, the player uses two analog sticks to realistically simulate how arms would be used to push and steer the ball. The player also has the ability to dash and gain more speed, and could also jump incredibly high. The player can even perform a quick turn if they find themselves stuck in a corner. This allows the player to better orient themselves and starts rolling from a more convenient position. Bashing into walls and large objects (or even being chased by animals) can cause the Katamari to drop some items, which in turn, lowers the player’s score. If the Katamari is capable of picking up items of great width or of an odd shape, the player starts to feel how off-balance and bumpy their path starts to become when rolling the ball.
Dynamics
Run-time behavior of the mechanics acting on player inputs
Size, weight, and surface area are considered by the game to determine whether a certain object will stick onto the Katamari or not. Most levels are timed, and the Prince is expected to reach a certain quota (a specific measurement) within the set time limit. Most of the gameplay is about managing your movement. The more the player crashes with larger objects and experiments with what kind of items the Katamari can handle (depending on its size), the better the player becomes at controlling their own steering and at being selective with what kind of items they should be picking up. Playing through each level causes the player to adopt a certain technique, and seeing special and unique items motivates the player to make the Katamari as big as possible.
On some levels, you are even expected to collect specific items for building a certain constellation. Colliding with problematic objects or rolling across different terrains manipulates the vibration feature. This could either cause a positive or negative effect on the player, depending on the situation.
Aesthetics
Emotional responses evoked in the player when they interact with the game system
Each level takes place in a different country or area of planet Earth, which changes the design of each stage and adds more variety to the items that are in it. Seeing new objects and even live animals will bring more of a drive out of the player and makes them especially ambitious towards collecting specific items.
Each stage also contains a Royal Present. It does not necessarily improve gameplay, but they essentially work as “skins” that serve more as an appeal to the player. Finding these gifts also works as a dynamic because it motivates the player to explore as much as possible at each level.
The use of sound and vibrations work as cues to invoke different reactions from the player. If there is a lot of pressure set onto the player as they are racing against time, the player might be in more of a panicked state when the controllers start vibrating because the Katamari is dropping items. However, a lot of excitement can be brought out of the player when the Katamari reaches a certain size, triggering a lively animation and vibrating the controllers. A lot of the sound effects generated from picking up multiple items in a row enhance the player’s experience and further encourages them.
The art style is particularly noteworthy and is guaranteed to stand out to its audience. It is attractive, interesting, and it holds a certain charm. There is a number of flashy character designs, from the many cousins of the Prince to the Prince’s own father, the King of All Cosmos. Overall, the game is full of colorful patterns and interesting changes in style when viewing cutscenes and when encountering different species in the stages. All of these aspects appropriately complement the humorous dialogue and the silly premise. Thus, the game holds a very rich theme that is playful, and full of color, life, and energy.
Bartle Player Analysis
Socializer
Form relationships with other players by telling stories within the game world
Katamari Damacy is a single-player game and a very simple one too. There aren’t any NPC’s to form relationships with (while one can consider the King of Cosmos a potential NPC, he merely is the player’s guide). However, Katamari Damacy does offer a Player vs Player mode, which would allow you to play against your friend and show off your rolling skills and have bragging rights.
Explorer
Discover the systems governing the operation of the game world
The levels in Katamari Damacy are nice and broad. The player is incentivized to explore everywhere in an area to find more objects to make their Katamari bigger. By exploring, the player will appreciate the aesthetic of Katamari’s minimalistic design and find cute little easter eggs. An example is finding an NES in Katamari Damacy ReRoll. There are some levels where the player can find a gift that was left for the Prince which will give the player an optional cosmetic to put on the prince.
Killer
Interfere with the functioning of the game world or the play experience of other players
Throughout the game, you will see various amounts of living creatures. These animals may be either harmless and can inhibit the player’s Katamari size. But when you do get a sufficient Katamari size, the player can actually “fight back” and roll up these creatures that would push the player around before. One might also feel a kick from charging their Katamari and cleaning out the entire area for getting a greater Katamari size.
Achiever
Accumulate status tokens by beating the rules-based challenges of the game world
The player is given a multitude of items to collect to make their Katamari bigger. These items collected are kept in a log which shows a fraction of what the player found compared to the total amount available in the game. In Katamari Damacy, being an explorer will go hand in hand with being an Achiever. The player is already tasked to reach specific Katamari size milestones before advancing. These milestones are checkpoints that upgrade your Katamari and will allow players to pick up items they previously weren’t able to. On some levels, the player will be advised to collect specific things. In the level “Make Cancer,” the player is told to collect only crabs and it will determine the size of your star based on the amount you collected.