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Digital Trends
6 days ago
- Entertainment
- Digital Trends
To a T review: imperfection defines Katamari Damacy creator's new game
To a T MSRP $20.00 Score Details 'To a T's well-intentioned story about inclusivity misses key nuances about disability.' Pros Inventive gameplay Creative controls Catchy music Well-meaning story Cons Weaker back half Mixed messaging on disability Lacking accessibility options 'Why you can trust Digital Trends – We have a 20-year history of testing, reviewing, and rating products, services and apps to help you make a sound buying decision. Find out more about how we test and score products.' There's no such thing as perfection. Just look at To a T. Recommended Videos The latest project from Uvula, a small studio co-founded by Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi, is a celebration of life's imperfections. It's an oddball game about a kid stuck in a perpetual T-pose who is trying to, quite literally, fit into the world around them. That's no easy task when you're dealing with grade school bullies who will take any opportunity they can to get a laugh at your expense — or trying to figure out where the sun went all of a sudden. Wackiness and sincerity come together to form a charming twist on the typical adventure game formula that has its heart in the right place. Considering that thematic intent, it's no surprise that To a T is, itself, proudly imperfect. Its experimental spirit leads to a compact story that packs a lot of creative swings into eight disjointed chapters. I can learn to appreciate the structural imbalance as a byproduct of originality, just as I can forgive some unsightly bugs and camera issues, but it's harder to fully hand wave away root problems. As a story that wades into grounded conversations about disability amid cosmic silliness, To a T struggles to do its subject matter with the nuance it needs despite its best intentions. Inventive gameplay To a T's best quality is the fact that you can't box it in with easy genre descriptors. I could be reductive here and call it a narrative adventure game that unfolds like a playable anime season, but even that wouldn't do its playful creativity justice. So let's start with the basics instead: To a T follows a 13-year old, gender-neutral child whose arms are permanently outstretched, turning their body into a T shape. Their story is split into eight episodic chapters, each around 30 minutes, that focus on how they go about their daily life with such a unique condition. It's a tightly directed narrative game framed through fixed camera perspectives, but one that gives players a little free time to explore a small town, collect coins, and buy outfits between chapters. Each episode even has its own intro and outro sequences complete with original songs that are total earworms. The project is consistently at its best when it's about exploring its protagonist's daily life. Like Katamari Damacy, this is a game that's just as interested in the controller as what pressing buttons actually does on screen. In the first episode, I need to help the kid get ready for school. When I sit down to eat a bowl of cereal, I need to pivot one stretched arm over to the box to grab it using the right joystick and then carefully tilt it to pour the cereal. I then need to do the same for the milk carton, using my left stick this time. The sequence ends with me leaning in to pick up an elongated spoon that stretches from my hand to my mouth and eating by flicking the stick up and down. It's a standout little scene that plays unlike anything else. And that's how it should be, because no other game stars a T-shaped hero, afterall. Original moments like that make for a consistently charming first half that's all about adapting to the kid's world. What begins as a fight with the controller soon becomes second nature to my hands. I repeat the same morning routine a few more times, quickly finding that I'm able to brush my teeth or wash my face with just a little practice. Later, I learn to raise my hand to answer a question in class by tilting my entire body to one side. In the story's wackiest moment, I discover that my arms make it so I can turn myself into a human tornado by spinning my right stick quickly. There are even a few Mario Party-esque minigames sprinkled into chapters, like one that has me catching falling scoops of ice cream with a cone in each hand. It's a flurry of inventive gameplay ideas that really leaves you to ask why so many games follow the same stale formulas when there are so many ways to approach interactivity. It's a place where nothing is 'normal,' which also means that it's rarely boring. That creative spirit does go a little off the rails in the story's back half. The last four chapters trade in pleasant slice of life scenes for left-field bottle episodes starring the story's wider cast of characters. While that does help add some dimension to the world, giving a little spotlight to the child's mother and trusty dog companion, it takes the story in a completely different direction that feels a little more concerned with being surprising than cohesive. Though more damning is that those episodes simply aren't as fun to toy around with as they ditch the imaginative T-shaped gameplay for nearly half of the five hour runtime. Though I was less engaged during those moments, it's still always enchanting to see the oddball world fully reveal itself. This is a town where kids live out very mundane routines, brushing their teeth and going to gym class every day. That happens in the same breath that they buy lunch from sandwich artist giraffes and get their hair cut by a crab. The story goes to some truly out of this world places, but it never feels at odds with the world Uvula creates here. It's a place where nothing is 'normal,' which also means that it's rarely boring. That's true of the game itself, too. Grappling with disability What's more of a struggle for To a T is the well-meaning, but messy conversation about disability that it opens. On a surface level, it treats its subject matter with the level of kindness and sensitivity that it deserves. The protagonist's condition is wacky, but it's approached like a real disability that they've learned to live with. Their life is filled with assistive tools like a unicycle to get around town or a faucet that points up. They have a cute service dog that helps them get dressed in the morning and flush the toilet. They've even figured out how to navigate a world that isn't built with them in mind, knowing how to get through narrow doors by walking through them at an angle. As silly as the visual is at first, these moments are rarely played for laughs long term. Players must learn to adapt to the kid's life experience, hopefully giving them a better understanding of how real people with disabilities move through life. To a T is too wishy washy about what it actually wants to say. Those good intentions do eventually butt heads with the story's goofy twists, though. Sometimes it means teetering into tropes that are divisive in the community it portrays. The tornado ability I discover is a fun gameplay idea, but it plays into a hotly debated 'my disability is a superpower' trope as it becomes a tool I use to save the day when no one else can. More problematic is a late game twist that's meant to take the story to one last wacky height, but heavily 'others' its hero in the process. We're repeatedly asked to think of this as your average kid, but later shown that they're anything but. It works too hard to paint them as special instead of normal, a self-defeating decision that's bound to make it divisive. What I find most frustrating is how much a game that deals with disability doesn't seem terribly interested in making itself broadly playable to that community. There's an accessibility menu in the game, but it only features one single option that makes spinning easier. It's not like the game couldn't have used more options either. The standard button layout occasionally has me twisting my fingers in knots so I can sprint while shining a flashlight or performing other actions. The fixed camera angles occasionally obscure where I am on screen and make it hard to navigate. Plenty of games fail when it comes to accessibility (just look at Blue Prince, which launched without crucial colorblindness options), but it's especially jarring to leave them out of a game where its hero uses assistive tools. The problem, as I see it, is that To a T is too wishy washy about what it actually wants to say. It uses topics like disability and body image issues interchangeably when those are two very separate discussions. Someone with limited mobility faces specific challenges that aren't fully analogous to someone dealing with bullying over their weight, for instance. The story ultimately arrives at a generalized conclusion about how there's no such thing as perfection and we should celebrate one another for who we are. It makes good on that idea in subtle ways, like choosing to leave its main character as a genderless kid who can be dressed up in any clothing, but the multiple topics it tries to bring together do not call for a one size fits all approach to storytelling. It's all a little Sesame Street in its approach, boiling everything down to a thin 'we're all just a little different' conclusion that feels insufficient. As clumsy as it may be, though, I can't fault To a T for trying to craft an inclusive story that's delivered with sincerity. It's heartening to see a video game story that centers disability and encourages players to connect with one another's experiences through play. It's not perfect, but nothing is. To a T challenges us to reject the status quo, both in the way it experiments with a well-trodden genre and in its story about embracing our differences. The view out your window is bound to get boring when you see the same thing every day. To a T was tested on PC.
WIRED
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- WIRED
‘Katamari Damacy' Creator's New Game Is About Teen Angst, Cute Dogs, and Eye Boogers
Mar 28, 2025 7:00 AM Keita Takahashi talks about his latest game, To a T , which lets you navigate teenage hardships while your hands are stuck in a T-pose. Still from to a T. Courtesy of XBOX As a child, beloved Japanese game developer Keita Takahashi was picked on in school, so he never felt like going. His latest game, To a T , emulates some of those challenges. It tells the story of Teen—a kid struggling to fit in, dealing with eye boogers, and finding themselves through song and exploration, all while their arms are inexplicably stuck in a T-pose. To a T, to be released by Annapurna Interactive May 28, follows Takahashi's trajectory of creating colorful, playful games that are undeniably cute but incredibly odd. His best-known game, Katamari Damacy , is about rolling up everything in sight, from pens to people, in an ever-growing ball, featuring an unforgettable soundtrack and the most flamboyant king to ever grace games. Others, like 2019's Wattam , are eccentric, vibrant, and full of poop. Created with the game studio Uvula, To a T follows Teen's struggles navigating the bathroom, getting dressed, and dealing with bullies as their arms are trapped in a T. Fortunately Teen's dog, a shockingly adept creature who puts modern service dogs to shame, is there to help whenever Teen needs an extra set of movable hands. (Annapurna Interactive aptly describes Teen's furry helper as being 'a very cute dog.') The episodic tale opens with an upbeat song about the game (not to be confused with 'The Giraffe Song,' sung in a teaser video by Rebecca Sugar). During a brief demo I played, I guided Teen through washing their face, picking outfits, and getting ready for school. Hoping for some deeper insights into the game, I tracked down Takahashi at an Xbox event in San Francisco during GDC, where he was hiding in a back corner away from the bustle of the day and the bar. But, while he's loath to answer too many questions about his game and what it all means, he'll still gamely, gently troll anyone who comes his way. Below is an abbreviated version of a very puzzling interview. WIRED: Tell me a little bit about what is, generally, going on in this game. Keita Takahashi: [ Laughs ] What's generally going on with this game? We'll start there. It's a game about a teenager who's stuck as a T-pose and trying to figure out where the T-pose is coming from. It's a game about—umm. [ Long pause ] Do I need to explain? [ Another long pause ] No. [ Laughs ] That's fair. Who is this character? How would you describe them? A teenager, 13-years-old, female or male, whatever I mean, I don't care—stuck in a T-pose, for some reason. What makes T the perfect pose? Because it's perfect! You are perfect. I think it's just perfect. What do you think the hardest thing to do when you're T-posed is? Go to the bathroom. That's why the dog helps [with] everything. Changing the clothing, bathroom, washing your face. I've never played a game that had me start by going to the bathroom. Really? Yeah. Why? WIRED: It's an excellent question. Tell me about the decision to— Decision? [ Laughs ] Yeah, decisions, yes. I decided. Because our life could be more fun. What do you think would make life more fun? The path that you had before, then forgot—when you were younger, and there was more fun. People, for some reason—it's easy to forget. What do you think people lose from kids to adulthood? What do you think? How much time you got? What do you think? Hmm. I don't know why it's easy for other people to forget more innocent or pure [times.] I don't know why! Did making this game help you rediscover innocence for yourself? I'm not a teacher. [ Laughs ] I don't want to push my soul to the people. I just want people to get some perspective on what a video game can do, rather than fighting or RPG stuff. This is for the next generation of game devs. They don't need to stick to a platformer or something. They can make a new genre or category of game. What genre would you call To a T ? No. [ Laughs ] I hate the concept of a genre. It's just a marketing tool. You know, what Beyoncé said. ['I believe genres are traps that box us in and separate us,' Beyoncé said in a GQ interview.] The concept of the genre is kind of funny. That's right! It's hard to define your games, but I'm curious how you, when forced into a corner by a red-headed journalist from WIRED, define your video games. That's part of the reason why I'm making this game. What's the definition of a video game? It's—no wait, no, this is an interview of you. [ Laughs ] What do you think is a video game? At least interactivity. That's it. I just realized, what I want to do is make people smile and have fun. It doesn't need to be interactivity, or it doesn't need to be video game video games. I can make a cartoon or animation to make people have fun and laugh. This time, I just don't care about the genre or what the video game is. This is just what I want to make. I had another question but … I forgot. That's OK. Just forget.
