Ratatan (ラタタン) is a "Command Carnival"-style Rhythm Game/Roguelike hybrid by Ratata Arts, Tokyo Virtual Theory, and pH Studio. It is a Creator-Driven Successor to Patapon, created by several returning Patapon developers, including series designer Hiroyuki Kotani and composer Kemmei Adachi. It first entered Early Access on September 17th, 2025 for Steam and consoles.

The goddess has transported the Medama people to the desolate desert planet of Redo. Now it's your job to lead them using an army of Cobun and various Ratatan to guide the airship Fortrun all the way to the Everafter, where the Goddess lies waiting.

While the inspiration is very obvious, Ratatan is also definitely not just "Patapon 4" with a new coat of paint. Gameplay consists of individual runs that send you back to the hub city of Rataport if you lose, where you can select and purchase upgrades as well as formulate a new squad of Cobun and Ratatan to venture back out into Redo. Ratatan themselves function as your controllable character, but they cannot attack themselves, only able to issue commands to their Cobun to deal damage. During an individual run, you'll also be able equip unique perks called Ratakaruta that make your Cobun army stronger.

Ratatan features:

• Action Commands: Similar to its predecessor, the gameplay is driven by commands executed over a 4/4 measure. Unlike Patapon, however, there are only 3 inputs since the bottom button is reserved for jumping. Left is RAT-TAT-TAT, right is ZUN-TAKA-TAN, and up is YAH-HOI-HOI. Depending on the pattern in which the buttons are pressed, the player prompts the army to perform actions like attack, move, or execute a special ability. For example, left/left/left/break (RAT-TAT RAT-TAT RA-TAT-TAT) orders your army to rally, where as left/break/left/left (ZUN-TAKA-TAN ZUN-TAKA ZUN-TAKA-TAN) orders your army to guard and dodge.
• Alpha Strike: Most bosses have an extremely dangerous attack that is easily capable of one-shotting your Ratatan if it hits them that they use when they get below a certain health threshold. To compensate, these attacks are often the most heavily telegraphed, potentially having two whole measures for you to prepare, and they typically don't get the chance to use them twice unless you're really falling behind.
• Already Done for You: Occasionally you will encounter a Battle Skip event, where all the enemies in a battle will suddenly and mysteriously be destroyed before you even enter the room, allowing you to freely claim its rewards without obstacle. In Episode 2 this is revealed to be the doings of certain Dark Ratatan, who are also fighting their way through hordes of Teshita to try and reach the Everafter.
• Always Critical Hit Attack: The Wind Ratakaruta specialize in buffing critical hits to deal extra damage and additional effects, so the Attack and Hustle Tech Ratakaruta in the Wind class significantly buff the chance that any attack or Hustle Tech used deals a critical hit, respectively.
• Anti-Debuff: While it also functions as a Defend Command, you can upgrade the Defend song to clear any status effects currently inflicted on your Cobun when you use it.
• Anti-Frustration Features: If the game is too challenging, you can turn on Welcome Mode, which gives you extra resources every run, or Simple Controls, which make command inputs easier to remember.
• Arbitrary Headcount Limit: During a run, you'll be able to collect Choruses that add Cobun to your army, but you'll eventually cap out at a certain number. This number can be increased by purchasing upgrades for it from Clerkwell in Rataport though, it itself caps out at a maximum of 18 Cobun.
• Big Boo's Haunt: World 5 is "Bonedead Theater", a spooky undead graveyard filled with monsters like animated gravestones, sentient Jack O'Lanterns and whatever affront to nature Boneless Bear is supposed to be.
• Boss Warning Siren: When entering a boss room, a big alert saying "WARNING" will appear onscreen for a moment as you walk over to the boss.
• Call a Hit Point a "Smeerp":
  • What other roguelikes would call "perks" or "skill upgrades" (randomly selected ability perks that give you various stat bonuses or add additional affects to your character), this game refers to as "Ratakaruta".
  • Special abilities that you expend with a Mana Meter would normally just be called "unit abilities" or "special attacks", but here they are called "Hustle Techs".
• Cast from Hit Points: One Fire Ratakaruta significantly buffs the amount of damage that Hustle Techs deal in exchange for consuming a small portion of your Ratatan's hit points, making it very high-risk but also extremely powerful if you can avoid damage or have access to consistent healing.
• Color-Coded Armies: The Medama units have a white color theme with bright colored accents, while Teshita units are Red and Black and Evil All Over. When Teshitas do have some kind of color, it usually tends to be dark and menacing, such as The Jolly Hermit's dark blue and orange colors.
• Color-Coded Elements: The six different element types of Ratakaruta and their associated Elemental Forces are designated as Fire (red), Water (blue), Ice (white), Poison (purple), Lightning (yellow) and Wind (green).
• Color-Coded Item Tiers:
  • Ratakaruta come in Common, Rare, Epic and Legendary variants, which are gray, blue, purple and gold, respectively. Additionally, rarer Ratakaruta have more holographic foil on them as if they were rare trading cards, with Duo Ratakaruta outright having a rainbow foil effect.
  • Weapons follow the same convention as Ratakaruta, with your basic starting gear and easily-obtained Shop Fodder being gray and Legendary weapons being gold. Mythic Weapons are distinguished as being red to make it clear they're a step above even Legendary weapons.
• Combos: Executing well timed commands builds up a Tension gauge, and executing enough of them activates the Fever mode. The gauge is reduced by invalid or poorly timed commands, or by going for multiple measures without any commands.
• Co-Op Multiplayer: If you so choose, you can play online with friends in a version of the game where each player controls an individual Ratatan with their own army of Cobun (though the game is subsequently balanced around having so many additional units.
• Crosshair Aware: Many enemies employ attacks that target a specific patch of space, which is marked on the ground beforehand so you can dodge out of the way in time (or at least move your Ratatan out of danger; your Cobun might not be so lucky).
• Damage-Sponge Boss: Most bosses have an absolute ton of health to balance out how much damage you can throw their way, so as to give them a fighting chance against your army (not that with a strong build you can't vaporize their health bar anyway).
• Death Is a Slap on the Wrist: Zig-zagged. Your Cobun army is never in danger of being permanently depleted, as any Cobun that fall in battle will eventually be replaced after some time (albeit not with full health). However, it's still in your best interest not to let too many of your Cobun die at once, as your Ratatan (whose death will result in the current run ending) is completely defenseless without any Cobun to command and inputting an attack or Hustle Tech command with no Cobun available causes nothing to happen.
• Death Throws: Anything that isn't a Ratatan or a boss is sent careening offscreen once their health runs out.
• Decapitated Army: The death of any of your Cobun is only a momentary setback, as they'll always return from the grave after a bit. The game's true challenge lies in keeping your Ratatan alive, since they're a Mook Commander and your run will immediately end when they die unless you have Revives left.
• Defend Command: Playing ZUN-TAKA-TAN ZUN-TAKA ZUN-TAKA-TAN will cause your army to generate shields around themselves that largely block incoming damage, though this is risky to use against more powerful attacks such as those from bosses.
• Derivative Differentiation: The Patapon series was more of an action RPG with Real-Time Strategy elements. While the very core of the gameplay remains the same, its successor Ratatan is a full-on Roguelike with vastly different progression and more unique and advanced controls.
• Dismantled MacGuffin: At the start of Episode 2, Crow surmises that the reason the Goddess didn't hear Fortrun's song and let you into the Everafter is because you need five different Goddess Songs scattered throughout the lands to really get her attention from Fortrun's singing. Unfortunately for you, the Dark Ratatan are now also on the hunt for these songs so that they can reach the Everafter themselves, bringing you into conflict with them as you try to assemble the songs once more.
• Do Not Run with a Gun: A very bizarre rhythm game-based variation. Your Ratatan moves independently from their army of Cobun and you can control them at all times, but they have to stand still in order to hit notes. This means that you are incredibly exposed while playing a command song and need to carefully keep track of your position to avoid leaving yourself open to damage while commanding your army.
• Do Well, But Not Perfect: Like the Patapon series, there is an element of strategy in deliberately not playing a command at times in order to better maneuver your army. Since your Ratatan moves independently of their Cobun and can't move while playing a command song, it can sometimes be more advantageous to not play a command in order to move your Ratatan out of danger. The game facilitates doing this even better than Patapon—playing incorrect measures only decreases the Fever meter rather than throw you out of it altogether, and you're even given a grace measure with no ill effects as long as you don't fail multiple measures in a row.
• Elemental Fusion: Leving up two different types of Ratakaruta to level 2 during a run allows you to potentially receive a Duo Ratakaruta for either of them that offers an extremely powerful ability which works off of both elements. You can only have one Duo Ratakaruta at a time during a run, so it's something you should carefully take into consideration based on your current build.
• Elite Mooks: The Dark Ratatan can summon Dark Cobun in their boss fights; these are essentially the same as enemy Teshita except that they have the strength and durability of your own Cobun (and require commands from their Dark Ratatan in order to do things).
• Endless Winter: According to Crow, the ice kingdom of "Frozen Flower Fantasia" was once a beautiful and temperate land of colorful blooming flowers, but that it's recently become overtaken by a neverending snowfall that has turned it into a Slippy-Slidey Ice World.
• Enemy Chatter: As you make your way through the world, the enemy Teshitas and Dark Ratatan will talk to you as you fight them, ranging from hurling insults to being oddly friendly. Sometimes your Cobun will even adorably quip back at them!
• Eyepatch of Power: Most allied characters have only one eye; the humanoid hero units included. All of them are shown wearing eyepatches, bandages, or some other object that obscures only one of their eyes.
• Fakin' MacGuffin: At the conclusion of Episode 2, it's revealed that all the Goddess Melodies that you collected were actually Dark Melodies created by Tangletung that the Dark Ratatan deliberately gave to you, and that they kept all the real Goddess Melodies for themselves. Subverted when it turns out that the actual Goddess Melodies still don't open the way to the Everafter, leaving everyone completely stunned and confused as to what to do next.
• Gangplank Galleon: The first world is "Pirates of the Paraddean", which has The Swashbuckling Mantaneers as the enemy faction. Led by Captain Barbatoid (a ray with cavalier boots, a longcoat, and a bicorne hat), they sail the Paraddean Seas on their Jolly Hermit, a hermit crab residing in a pirate ship flying a black skull flag.
• Genre Mashup: In addition to already being a "Command Carnival" game (a Rhythm Game where Action Commands are inputted to the beat of a song in order to engage in tactical squad-based combat), Ratatan is also a Roguelike where individual runs are vastly different from one another.
• Gratuitous English: Some of the lyrics to the various battle songs include whole English words in them. For example, "Jam Jammin Jungle Journey" features a lot of repetition of the word "Jammin'" and "Bonedead Theatre" sees the phrase "Born to be dead!" repeated a lot.
• Hard-Mode Mook: Activating the Formidable Invitation modifier in the Goddess Games causes there to not only be a much larger number of more dangerous enemy Teshita in each Battle, but also for there to be uniquely spawning dangerous fauna in some battle compositions.
• Have You Seen My God?: The main plot of the game involves the Medama trying to find their Goddess, who has disappeared to a mythical realm called the Everafter that they're trying to locate.
• In a Single Bound: The Jump song (RAT-TAT-TAT YAH-HOI YAH-HOI) is functionally identical to the Jump song from Patapon (DON DON CHAKA CHAKA) in that it allows your entire army to jump extremely high into the air all at once and is the only way to avoid certain boss attacks (though it's usually reserved for much more dangerous ones that stand a chance of instantly killing you).
• Item Crafting: Higher-level enemies and bosses drop various crafting materials (usually body parts or bits of their gear) that you can bring to Clang back in Rataport for him to fabricate into powerful Epic and Legendary weapons. Interestingly, items that you craft in this manner will have different Decorunes from ones acquired by killing an enemy or boss itself.
• Jungle Japes: World 3 is "Jam Jammer Jungle Journey", a thick jungle teeming with danger in the form of poisonous Man Eating Plants, golems and Teshitas. The boss is even a giant anthropomorphic totem pole.
• "Just Frame" Bonus: Inputting a note exactly on the beat is referred to as a "Just Input". Playing an entire measure's worth of Just Inputs on a full song command activates a Just Judgment, which slightly powers up the effectiveness of the command inputted compared to normal (e.g. playing a Just Judgment on the Attack song causes the attack to be a bit stronger), while also generating more MP^note if the move itself doesn't consume MP and increasing the Tension meter more quickly.
• Kill Enemies to Open: Each Battle room is locked until you kill all the enemies within it, upon which you can freely progress to the next room.
• Kill One, Others Get Stronger: The "Lonely Hero" Cobun upgrade causes your last remaining Cobun to get proportionally stronger depending on how many other Cobun have just been killed.
• Limit Break: Playing YAH-HOI ZUN-TAKA RAT-TAT RAT-TAT-TAT while the Tension meter is completely full will activate your Ratatan's unique Super Fever Skill, a powerful ability that can turn the tide of a battle, at the cost of fully depleting the meter. Super Fever Skills range from powerful Status Buffs to your Cobun to launching a barrage of extremely powerful projectiles at the enemy. Since it takes time to rebuild Tension afterward, it's important to use these abilities carefully lest you waste them at the wrong moment.
• Locked Door: The gateway to the Everafter (and presumably where the Goddess lies) is blocked off by a giant stone door. Fortrun is supposed to know the magical song to open it, but it doesn't work, and nothing that the Medama or even the Dark Ratatan can do seems to open it. Even after collecting all the Goddess Melodies, it still doesn't open.
• Magikarp Power: Collecting multiple Ratakaruta of the same element type causes them to apply additional effects to your Ratatan (e.g. Fire Ratakaruta surround them with spinning fireballs that damage enemies, Lightning Ratakaruta shoot out a lightning bolt at the nearest enemy, etc.). These start out relatively weak, but if you keep collecting the same types then they eventually become incredibly strong. You can also have multiple of these effects applied at once as long as you have enough Ratakaruta from each of them.
• Mana Meter: During combat you have access to various different Hustle Techs, which are special abilities your Cobun can use and are activated via specific song commands (e.g. Hustle Tech 1 is YA-HOI YA-HOI YA-HOI-HOI). Hustle Techs consume a resource called MP (seen in the bottom left under your Ratatan's health) that slowly regenerates every measure and can be influenced by various Ratakaruta.
• Modular Difficulty: Clearing "Bonedead Theatre" once causes the Goddess Games to be unlocked in Rataport, which are unique modifiers you can apply to a run that make them harder in exchange for rare and special rewards (e.g. increasing the damage that enemies deal, making Just inputs harder to get, etc.).
• Nicknaming the Enemy: Your Cobun have a habit of referring to the enemy Teshitas as "scruffies", due to their shaggier appearance than the largely smooth-skinned Medama.
• Oculothorax: Cobun and the most basic enemy units have one eye.
• Pain and Gain: There are two separate Fire Ratakaruta that decrease the amount of damage your Ratatan takes and increases the damage they deal when their health decreases past a certain threshold.
• Player Headquarters: In between runs, you'll walk around the city of Rataport talking to various NPCs in order to improve your army and upgrades, boost the stats of equipment or outright craft new ones. You can also talk to the various characters around the place for some extra Flavor Text.
• Power at a Price: You can find various Goddess Altars in rooms that offer higher-quality Ratakaruta or rare equipment in exchange for a small portion of your max HP, MP or Tokens. Beware, though—some of them are lotteries based on chance and there's no guarantee your sacrifice will be worth it.
• Pre-Ending Credits: Episode 1 concludes with your Ratatan ascending the staircase to the door to the Everafter while the credits roll, complete with Credits Medley and Thanking the Viewer message...only to discover that the door is locked and Fortrun's singing won't open it. Thus you're catapulted back to Rataport and Episode 2 begins as you try to figure out how to open the door.
• Purposefully Overpowered: Duo Ratakaruta are ludicrously strong, and acquiring one is a massive power boost that can completely turn the tide of a run. This is necessarily offset by the fact that you can exclusively have one during a single run and that they're extremely rare even after fulfilling the prerequisites for receiving one, meaning that it is unlikely for you to get a Duo Ratakaruta before the late-game and are thus typically unable to completely steamroll a run using them.
• Rare Random Drop: Enemies have a calculated chance of dropping various tiers of loot, with them being more likely to drop lower-level items and having a very small chance of dropping high-value equipment and/or rare crafting materials like Legendary Gems. Bosses can also sometimes drop their boss weapons when you defeat them, and Dark Ratatan very rarely award the unique set of Mythic weapons from their boss fights.
• Regenerating Shield, Static Health: Collecting enough Water Ratakaruta will cause your Ratatan to receive a barrier of extra hit points equal to a percentage of their max HP at the start of every combat. At first it's only a small bonus, but if you keep collecting Water to improve it, it can start granting you hundreds of extra HP every room.
• Shout-Out:
  • One of the things your Cobun can say when dying is "What a world!"
  • The first world, the pirate-themed "Pirates of the Paraddean", is obviously named after Pirates of the Caribbean.
  • The second world, the wild west-themed "Bad Day on Yeehawler Mountain", is named after Bad Day at Black Rock.
  • In "Jam Jammer Jungle Journey", one possible Enemy Chatter line that the Jammers can say is "Looks like meat's back on the menu, boys!"
  • While the Dark Ratatan are generally "adjacent" species to their Ratatan counterparts (ex: Nyandola, a cat, has a dog rival), Pyokorappa's is a tortoise, evocative of The Tortoise and the Hare.
  • When encountering Funky Fang after exhausting his dialogue, he'll say "May the odds ever be in your favor!", both a play on his crippling gambling addiction and a reference to the famous phrase from The Hunger Games.
• Shows Damage: When minibosses and bosses are on extremely low health, their sprite will change to show them looking extremely dazed with Wingding Eyes.
• Slippy-Slidey Ice World: World 4 is "Frozen Flower Fantasia", a snowy ice realm filled with local fauna that resemble penguins, mammoths and yetis. The boss, Chillwarden, is confronted in a palace made of ice.
• Straight for the Commander: Some enemies are designed to ignore your Cobun and immediately start charging at and attacking your Ratatan, which makes them extremely high-priority targets.
• Tier System:
  • Ratakaruta operate on a series of four tiers from Common to Legendary, with their effects increasing the higher the rarity they are. While theoretically every Ratakaruta can have a rarer variant, there are also unique rarer Ratakaruta that offer specific abilities or bonuses. Duo Ratakaruta are also extremely rare and operate in a tier unto themselves that can only be accessed by leveling two different Ratakaruta elements to Level 2.
  • Weapons are also found in Common up to Legendary tiers, with Common and Rare weapons being easily obtained off of the corpses of many enemies while Epic and Legendary weapons usually only drop very sporadically from minibosses or bosses. Dark Ratatan also very rarely drop the Mythic weapons wielded by their Dark Cobun, which are even stronger than Legendary weapons.
• Timed Mission: Target Timer challenges appear in some Battle rooms, where you are tasked with killing a specific marked enemy within a time limit. Doing so successfully immediately kills all the other enemies in the room and rewards you with an openable Chest, similar to more dangerous rooms.
• Tornado Move: Collecting Wind Ratakaruta will eventually cause a green tornado to be summoned each time you use Hustle Tech 1. This tornado pierces through enemies and deals high knockback, making it useful for pushing forward into groups of enemies.
• Translate the Loanwords, Too: Ratakaruta take the form of trading cards of different colors and rarities. This would seemingly indicate that they're supposed to be called "Ratacards" in English (supported by how the word is always spelled in Katakana), and yet the translation has foregone that.
• Upgraded Boss: Selecting the "Formidable Invitation" module in the Goddess Games causes all the normal bosses to be replaces with much harder and more aggressive versions of themselves with deadlier versions of their attacks (as well as using their Alpha Strikes with a much more alarming frequency). For example, The Jolly Hermit becomes The Scurvy Hermit and adds poison to its bubble attack as well as gaining a new poison cannon shot.
• War Has Never Been So Much Fun: Much in the same vein as Patapon, Ratatan is a very goofy, whimsical game about crushing all those who stand before you with overwhelming force, and actually might be more saccharine than Patapon. The planet Redo is a Sugar Bowl where it seems like every creatures that inhabits it is a cutesy chibi monster or bandit, and yet they're all equally vicious when it comes to destroying your army of Cobun as they advance on their quest. Cobun, despite their apparent naivete and innocent nature, will still cry for murder and chaos when the situation calls for it.
• The Wild West: World 2 is "Bad Day on Yeehawler Mountain", which is themed around cowboys and the American Southwest. The Stinger Diggers are the main villainous faction of this area. Led by Scorpswoosh Bill, a tall scorpion creature, they plunder the countryside whilst riding on their Wagoon.