Skip to main content

'Katamari Damacy' creator Keita Takahashi unveils new Tango AR project

Katamari Damacy series creator Keita Takahashi is working on a new augmented reality game that uses Google’s Tango technology to fill real-world spaces with video game characters and virtual interactive elements.

Woorld marks Takahashi’s latest effort as an indie creator, following up on his recent projects, which include Alphabet, Tenya Wanna Teens, and Wattam.

Recommended Videos

Takahashi demonstrates his new app in the video above. Woorld uses augmented reality technology to map the physical space of a room, from floor to ceiling. After setting up a play space, the app then fills the surrounding environment with bizarre creatures and interactive elements for players to discover over the course of each play session.

By positioning and manipulating augmented reality elements in specific ways, players can unlock new objects and characters for use in future sessions. In the game’s introductory video, Takahashi shows how players can make a sprout bloom by placing it under a rain cloud attached to the room’s ceiling. Nearby objects like tables and couches can also be incorporated into Woorld‘s augmented reality framework, further drawing players into the experience.

As you progress through Woorld‘s campaign, Takahashi notes that you’ll eventually unlock augmented reality pyramids, UFOs, toilets, and “other important items.” After completing a series of tasks, you’ll later unlock a sandbox mode that allows you to arrange and display all of your unlocked items at once. Takahashi teases further gameplay possibilities at the end of the trailer, showcasing scenarios involving laser guns and rooms that fill with water.

Though Takahashi is best known for creating Bandai Namco’s roll-’em-up action game Katamari Damacy and its sequel We Love Katamari, Woorld more closely resembles Takahashi’s 2009 project Noby Noby Boy.

Like Noby Noby Boy, Woorld is a free-form, playground-like experience that grows as players interact with virtual objects, and the in-game goals are largely defined by players themselves. Currently, there’s no word as to whether fans can expect to see characters from Katamari Damacy or Noby Noby Boy return for cameo appearances in Woorld.

The release date for Woorld is not yet known.

Danny Cowan
Former Digital Trends Contributor
Danny’s passion for video games was ignited upon his first encounter with Nintendo’s Duck Hunt, and years later, he still…
SanDisk’s latest drive sets new benchmark for consumer NVMe SSDs
The SanDisk WD Black SN8100 PCIe Gen 5 SSD with and without heatsink variants

SanDisk has officially introduced the WD Black SN8100, its latest high-end PCIe Gen 5 NVMe SSD targeting PC enthusiasts, gamers, and professional users. With sequential read speeds of up to 14,900 MB/s and write speeds of 14,000 MB/s, the drive sets a new bar for consumer SSD performance, surpassing some of the best NVMe SSDs currently on the market, including the Crucial T705. 

The SN8100 uses a standard M.2 2280 form factor and is available in capacities of 1TB, 2TB, 4TB, and 8TB. It’s worth noting that the 1TB model offers lower write speeds, up to 11,000 MB/s, compared to the higher-capacity versions, which reach up to 14,000 MB/s. 

Read more
Pairing the RTX 5090 with a CPU from 2006? Nvidia said ‘hold my beer’
RTX 5090.

Nvidia's best graphics cards are often paired with expensive CPUs, but what if you want to try a completely mismatched, retro configuration? Well, that used to be impossible due to driver issues. But, for whatever reason, Nvidia has just removed the instruction that prevented you from doing so, opening the door to some fun, albeit nonsensical, CPU and GPU combinations.

The instruction in question is called POPCNT (Population Count), and this is a CPU instruction that also prevents Windows 11 from being installed on older hardware. Its job is counting how many bits are present in a binary number. However, as spotted by TheBobPony on X (Twitter), POPCNT will not be a problem for Nvidia's latest graphics cards anymore.

Read more
AMD’s upcoming CPU could offer bonkers gaming performance
A fake and real AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D side by side.

AMD's Zen 5 architecture has been a popular choice for gamers due to its outstanding performance and 3D V-Cache capacity, and now a leak suggests Zen 7 could double down on that through a new "3D Core." According to YouTuber Moore's Law is Dead, "[AMD] is moving toward a lot of official variants."

AMD reportedly plans to launch a single overall architecture, divided into different product categories, including the expected lineup: Classic Cores, Dense Cores, Efficiency Cores, and Low-Power Cores. The 3D Core is the latest addition, and it is said to "require full cache chiplets" that "seem to be leading to profound performance increases."

Read more