Back in June of 2013, Venus Patrol announced at our HORIZON press conference that Katamari Damacy creator Keita Takahashi had joined upstart studio Funomena to create their first major game, and now that game has just been revealed.

While they’re still remaining tight-lipped on the actual gameplay, Funomena says Wattam — a combination of the Tamil and Japanese words for “making a loop” — provides a hint to what the game will be about, “making connections between different types of things.”

Above is the first trailer for the game just revealed at the PlayStation Experience event, which introduces Wattam‘s main-character mayor, with more details expected to trickle out throughout 2015, all of which you’ll obviously probably be seeing here.

One more HORIZON post for posterity’s sake: if you missed the Twitch.tv livestream of Venus Patrol & MOCAtv’s alternative E3 conference last week — graciously provided and masterminded by the super excellent production team at AREA5 — we’ve uploaded the conference in its entirety to YouTube so you can view it again at your leisure and on your device of choice.

As a reminder, you can also find more information, video, and big, gorgeous screenshots of all the HORIZON games at the conference’s website, as well as all the additional games curated by LA’s Sarah Brin for its post-show party.

Thanks again to all who have supported our efforts to showcase a selection of beautiful games to E3 — we hope to have more news soon on what’s next for HORIZON!

It’s been almost a week since we ran HORIZON, the alternative E3 press conference co-presented by Venus Patrol & MOCAtv, and to be honest, I think we’re all still recovering. Reaction to the conference has been more or less universally positive, and we’re super grateful both to everyone who made it happen and for all the kind words that have been coming in over the past few days from outfits like Polygon & The Verge.

That also includes photographer Brian Erzen, who documented the entire conference as it was happening, which we’re presenting here in slideshow form for those that couldn’t make it the day of. Above is the group shot or HORIZON’s presenters & participating developers that immediately followed the conference, and below the fold, a slew of other great photos of nearly everyone that took part.

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Super interesting news from Robin Hunicke — formerly designer and producer on games like Boom Blox, Journey and Glitch — and Martin ‘Pizzacity‘ Middleton, who joined thatgamecompany in 2006 to work on the PS3 port of flOw before creating much of the underlying technology of both Flower and Journey, as both have announced the foundation of Funomena, a new San Francisco based indie studio.

The duo have also announced that they’ll be collaborating with a number of TGC alum & friends including Journey and Monaco composer Austin Wintory, former thatgamecompany art director Matt Nava, and SuperBetter design director and San Francisco Global Game Jam organizer Chelsea Howe for their upcoming projects.

While there’s no formal announcement of their first project, Hunicke has hinted that they’ll be working with a non-profit on a game involving the use of pedometers, in an effort to tackle issues like childhood obesity — keep an eye on the Funomena blog to see more as the project takes shape.