The Wonderful End of the World is a game released by indie developer Dejobaan games in 2008. As the title suggests, the world is about to end (about to be
eaten, to be specific), and it's up to you and your sticky marionette-thing to save as much stuff as you can to colonize a new one. Essentially a
Katamari Damacy clone (albeit it a rather well-made one), it still has enough of its own charm and tongue-in-cheek humour to be a distinct experience, and was likely the closest thing to a Katamari game that PC gamers could have (at least, until the release of Katamari Reroll). The most obvious difference is that instead of rolling a ball of clutter, you control a stick man made of clutter. It can be bought from
Steam
or
the developer's website.
This Video Game contains examples of:
- Excuse Plot: Only time it's really brought up is in the theme song and in the final, apocalyptic level.
- Expository Theme Tune: The main menu background music gives just about all the plot the game has.
-
Follow the Leader: It's a pretty blatant copy of Katamari Damacy.- And they even made it just as ridiculous in its own way.
- Gameplay Grading: Completing a stage gives a letter grade that goes up to A+. These grades are required to unlock additional levels - the final one requiring at least an "A" on each other stage.
- Level Ate: The level Sugar Candy is made out of candy
- Paper People: The level Rice Paper Parade has everything as paper cut-outs in a 3D world.
- Permanently Missable Content: You grow as you become larger. However, small items in corners tend to be hard to reach, sometimes impossible depending on the level.
- Pinball Scoring: It parodies this by giving your score as a very literal count of how many items you've assimilated, with, written after it in brackets, '(billion)'.
- Planet Eater: What's going to cause the titular end of the world. Never seen in-game, but apparently has the head of a fish.
- Rising Up The Food Chain Game: As per a Katamari Damacy clone, you need to grow to absorb larger objects. You bounce off larger moving objects until you're large enough to absorb them, but is otherwise safe.
- Saving the World: Although more in the sense of saving a document.
- Secret Level: These two levels are filled with crates, and are part of the Valve Alternate Reality Game concerning potatoes.
- Shout-Out: Many, many, many. To start with, the Arcadia level has you collecting things from Pong, Pac-Man, a light-cycle, Centipede, and Tetris, the Bibliodiscotheque level (set in a library) has a giant orang-outang and a flying turtle, and the Sky Mall level has a white toy pick-up truck being chased by toy police cars.
- Timed Mission: Each stage has a time limit. In timed mode, the level ends early as soon as the A+ rank is reached. Levels may also be replayed without the timer or the stage ending.
- Visual Pun: Also numerous. For example, a computer with an actual mouse, or the computer mice are scurrying around like actual mice.
