Katamari Damacy

Katamari Damacy (Japanese: 塊魂, Hepburn: Katamari Damashii, lit. "Clump Spirit") is a third-person puzzle-action video game developed and published by Namco for the PlayStation 2. It was released in Japan in March 2004, and in North America in September 2004. The game resulted from a school project from the Namco Digital Hollywood Game Laboratory and was developed for less than US$1 million. In designing Katamari Damacy, the development team led by Keita Takahashi aimed to maintain three key points: novelty, ease of understanding and enjoyment.

The game's plot concerns a diminutive prince on a mission to rebuild the stars, constellations, and Moon, which were inadvertently destroyed by his father, the King of All Cosmos. This is achieved by rolling a magical, highly adhesive ball called a katamari around various locations, collecting increasingly larger objects, ranging from thumbtacks to people to mountains until the ball has grown great enough to become a star. Katamari Damacy's story, characters, and settings are bizarre and heavily stylized, rarely attempting any semblance of realism, though the brands and items used are based on those current in Japan during the game's production.

Overall, Katamari Damacy was well received in Japan and North America. The game was dubbed a sleeper hit and won several awards. The success of the game led to the creation of the Katamari franchise, and inspired the development of other video games. Some critics have called it one of the greatest games of all time. A high-definition remaster of the game, Katamari Damacy Reroll[a], was released on Microsoft Windows and Nintendo Switch in December 2018, and for PlayStation 4 and Xbox One in November 2020.