| System: | Windows |
| Score: |  3 (OK) |
In The Wonderful End of the World, you play as a nameless red-haired goddess who wants to save the world. You do this by rolling things up into a giant Clump of Souls and - wait, I think I've got this story confused with another game.
Actually she does this using a "marionette" which "absorbs" items into its body as it runs around the level. If you caught the earlier reference, then yes, this game is a Katamari Damacy clone. And there's nothing wrong with that.
If you've played Katamari Damacy you basically know what to expect. This game has a very similar type of humor to it. (Why does absorbing items into a marionette save them from the end of the world? Who is the red-haired goddess? Why is the world ending? Who cares, it's neat!) The look also matches Katamari Damacy in that kind of bright cartoon-like look.
That said, it's much shorter than Katamari Damacy: according to my Steam profile, I completed all levels in two hours, which includes time spent replaying some levels. These replays weren't necessarily because the level was fun. They were to unlock other levels, by absorbing an unspecified number of items to achieve a high enough letter grade to open other levels.
Unlike Katamari Damacy, where you'd have the explicit goal to create a 100m sized katamari, The Wonderful End of the World scores you on number of items absorbed and then uses that figure to create a letter grade. It would be nice to know what's required to get an "A," especially when other levels are locked based on grade.
There are other places where it breaks down. The game is not without bugs. It's annoyingly easy to get stuck. In a play through the last level, I fell through the object you start on and wound up unable to play the level because there was no longer any way to access anything I could absorb. (Thankfully this did not repeat and I was able to complete the level.)
When working properly, The Wonderful End of the World is a fun game, but it's really too short and the levels manage to be too small. Compared to the Katamari Damacy games, this game just doesn't have the level of polish. It wouldn't take much to bump this up to 4/5, but as it currently stands, you'll want to check out the demo but may find that even $10 is a little too much for this game.