Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan funded on Kickstarter in under an hour

The campaign’s next stretch goal will see a console version of the game enter development

Patapon spiritual successor Ratatan has been funded on Kickstarter in under an hour.

Helmed by Patapon creator Hiroyuki Kotani, with audio by original Patapon musician Kemmei Adachi, the game is a spiritual successsor to the cult-classic PlayStation series, Patapon.

The Kickstarter, which asked for $141,098 to fund the project at its lowest level, managed to earn that amount in just over 45 minutes. At the time of publishing, the project has earned $347,378 from 2,844 backers.

The project features several stretch goals, including an online mode at “approx $347,000” and a console version at “approx $527,000.” At the time of writing, the project hasn’t been updated to reflect the fact that the online mode stretch goal has seemingly been cleared.

The lowest standard tier of the Kickstarter, which grants players access to the game, sits at around $48. So far, around 1500 players have contributed to this tier.

Originally released for the PSP handheld in 2007, Patapon is a rhythm-based 2D platform / action game in which players command an army of cute anthropomorphic eyeballs known as “Patapons” that can be commanded to move forward, attack, defend and retreat by using a sequence of drum beats.

The game received two sequels on PSP, and the first two games were remastered with 4K visuals on PlayStation 4.

“The three main game concepts are over 100 cute characters fighting it out on screen, four-player simultaneous battles, and more adventure and roguelike elements than Patapon had,” producer Kazuto Sakajiri explained in an interview with VGC.

Kotani, who designed the original Patapon games, also said he wanted to make a Patapon-like experience but with new elements. He also didn’t rule out working with Sony on a traditional sequel in the future.

“Patapon was a really unique experience at the time of its release and reflected the development environment of that era. We wanted to make another game like that for the modern age,” he said.

“There’s a possibility of maybe doing a Patapon sequel in the future, but for this we really wanted to make our own game, in our own style, with specific types of gameplay that reflect what we want. After that, if there’s a chance to speak to Sony about doing a Patapon sequel then we’ll go from there.”