Wattam is a 2019 action puzzle video game designed by Keita Takahashi (the creator of the Katamari Damacy series and NOBY NOBY BOY), developed by Funomena, and published by Annapurna Interactive. The game begins with Mayor, a green cube with a bowler hat, who is sad because he is lonely. Soon afterwards, he befriends a rock, which turns out to be alive. As the game progresses, more characters, represented as anthropomorphic objects, join the scene.
Wattam provides examples of the following tropes:
- After the End: A great calamity happened in the past, with the details gradually becoming clear as you progress.
- Ambiguous Gender: With the names of the non-major characters being randomized, characters can either be assigned masculine, feminine, or gender-neutral names.
- Animate Inanimate Object: Everyone is some kind of object with a face on it. This includes plants, facial features, food, kitchen supplies, toys, and even poop.
- Anthropomorphic Personification: All of the cast members represent the personification of various concepts.
- The Artifact: The Mayor's family and the four seasons are portrayed with shapes reminiscent of the Playstation's controller face buttons (square, circle, triangle, and cross). These are the remnants of the game's original plan to release as a PlayStation 4 exclusive.
- The Atoner: The Moon destroyed Mother in a fit of jealousy, and came to regret it.
- Big Eater: Mouth, true to its name, is all about eating food. If you leave it be, it will chase after and eat food characters on its own.
- The Cameo: The Prince of All Cosmos and BOY show up after completing the main story, and are also playable.
- Color-Coded Characters: Which is also used for Painting the Fourth Wall during the finale, as the player is presented with four different responses to the Moon's confession, each of which corresponds to the reaction of the Mayor, his siblings and father.
- Developer's Foresight: If a tree attempts to eat Mouth, it will instead be kissed as it is far too large to be swallowed.
- Downer Beginning: The game opens with everything "becoming lost" and Mayor being depressed because he's all alone in the world. Things get much more cheerful and optimistic from there.
- Easily Forgiven:
- Downplayed with the Phone, who becomes increasingly upset each time her receiver is stolen, taking longer and longer to forgive each of the culprits.
- The Stationary threaten to overwhelm the Book upon their reappearance, chasing them around and driving them to panic. The incident is smoothed over quickly once everyone is calmed down.
- Factors into the game's ending, as one of the options presented to the player has the speaker openly questioning whether the Moon truly regrets their actions, comparing it to when the Book was being harassed.
- Evolving Music: The music changes based on which character is selected, where they are, and their current shape. For example, if the character is turned into a poop, the music will include farts.
- Forced Transformation: Characters eaten by a tree transform into food, while those eaten by Mouth become sentient poo. Toilet turns any character it flushes into gold. If a tree eats poo, they will either turn back to normal or into food that tree is able to produce. Surprisingly, none of the characters are impaired by the transformation and most of them are excited once they see their new form. Some characters that have only legs or no limbs at all in their normal state even benefit from the transformation.
- Grows on Trees: The four trees each produce different foods that aren't always fruit. These include vegetables, meat products, fast food, and gingerbread men. In the case of the winter tree, one of two things it can transform the characters it swallows into isn't even food!
- Hat of Power: Mayor's bowler hat, which has several functions, mostly for amusing others.
- Heroic Sacrifice: In the past, Queen Earth used her crown's power to explode everything away so they wouldn't be lost to the rampaging Dark Sphere.
- Kick the Dog: The Ikura Sushi is a parent with six egg children. Being food characters, they all are easy targets for Mouth's eating spree. If the sushi gets eaten (or otherwise separated from their children), the eggs start to uncontrollably cry... and then Mouth can eat the crying children.
- Mayor of a Ghost Town: Literally. The game opens with Mayor as a lonely creature on a floating cube of dirt. But then things get better from there.
- My Name Is ???: Grandpa's name is listed as "???" until the player finishes the game.
- Non-Fatal Explosions: The first power that the Mayor discovers is the ability to produce explosive presents underneath his hat, which harmlessly send everyone caught in the blast zone flying. Eventually, these explosions can also be used to revert transformed characters back to normal.
- Ocular Gushers: Anyone that stands in a vicinity of an Onion begins to cry uncontrollably. This is the key to restoring the water of the Summer world.
- Parrot Exposition: Frequently appears, with characters echoing the latest request or problem at hand. Such as whenever you perform a circle dance, or when everyone realizes that you need one more friend.
- The Power of Hate: Played With. The Moon attributes all of their strength to this, but all of that crumbled away due to the force of the Earth's Heroic Sacrifice, leaving them greatly reduced and fully repentant of their crimes.
- Sole Survivor: The Mayor is the only character available to play as until he discovers the Stone.
- Talking Poo: The mouth can turn any food characters or those converted into food by the trees into these.Tada! I am Poopy now!
- Toilet Humor: The mouth can eat any of the food characters and turn them into poops. One puzzle involves stacking a poop on top on an ice cream cone.
- Variable Mix: Depending on which character you're controlling or what actions you're performing, some instruments may be added to the track playing in the background.
- Vomit Indiscretion Shot: If a character tumbles around too much before recovering or stands next to poop for too long, they will expel rainbow vomit once the player lets them recover or switches to another character.
- Wham Episode: The Winter section is where the bulk of the main plot finally comes into play. The Mayor reunites with his father and learns of his origins and the seasons and transport characters make a circle alongside the Moon in an attempt to bring back Mother.
