The first all-new Katamari Damacy game in almost 8 years is trapped in Apple Arcade jail, and I can only hope it follows in Hello Kitty Island Adventure's footsteps to eventually escape
Almost eight years since its last totally new game, Katamari Damacy is back with a fresh installment, but there's an unfortunate catch – it's been banished to Apple Arcade jail for the foreseeable future.
Revealed today, Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE is bringing back the beloved, classic gameplay consisting of "roll katamari into objects, create increasingly massive orb" that everyone has loved for over 20 years, except this time there's a modern twist, with the focus being on building the King of All Cosmos's livestreaming career. No, really – an Apple blog post announcing the game reveals that creating stars from rolled up stuff will "energize" his streams. It adds: "As users advance, comments from in-game fans appear, and the longer they play, the larger their audience grows."
You can see this in action in the screenshots on its App Store page – TikTok-esque comments appear down the right side of the screen as you play, which say everything from "roll up more plz" to "I stan the King" and "why was this in my recommendations?" It's very silly, but I honestly love it – the fact that we've been waiting so long for a new game makes it all the more exciting, too. It was late 2017 when the last totally new game – the endless runner mobile title Amazing Katamari Damacy – released worldwide, and since then, we've only had a couple of remasters. However, this all makes the fact that Rolling LIVE is an Apple Arcade exclusive all the more unfortunate.
Apple Arcade subscribers across Mac, iPhone, iPad and Apple TV will be able to play Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE when it launches on April 3, but those on other platforms are all out of luck. With that being said, not all hope is lost. After all, Hello Kitty Island Adventure launched as an Apple Arcade exclusive in 2023 before it eventually made its way to Switch and PC earlier this year (and the lives of Sanrio fans everywhere are much better for it). With that in mind, hopefully the new Katamari game might just be taking a temporary pit stop here before rolling onto different platforms in the future.
Be sure to keep up with everything releasing this year and beyond in our roundup of new games.
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