For all the influence of “Pac-Man,” too few games have borrowed  or further developed its core gameplay mechanic: eating everything in sight.

Developers at Koei Canada seems to have recognized this significant misstep, however, and have made chowing down the central mechanic of their upcoming October DS title, “Prey the Stars.”

So, what does the name “Prey the Stars” have to do with … anything? Your guess is as good as mine. Thankfully, that’s beside the point.

“Prey the Stars” is similar to hardcore favorite “Katamari Damacy.” Your creature starts small and must continue eating more and more to consume bigger and bigger environmental pieces. Food is used to grow size. Buildings and objects are digested into points. What’s interesting about “Prey the Stars” is how fast the “Katamari” dynamic is flipped on the fly. Competing creatures can quickly knock you down to small sizes.

In the playable version Koei on display at their press event last week, this proved a little troublesome. I appreciated the competitive feel that results from forcing the player to constantly change strategies to maintain or restore their size. But the stages are far too small to make this entertaining over and over again. The first few times, sure, but the third or fourth? You tire of having to build up your creature once more.

The eating mechanics are slightly more complicated than just running into items on the game board. Once you approach an item, you participate in a short, button timing mini-game that determines how quickly you consume the item. The better you perform in the mini-game, the more you’ll get out of the individual item.

“Prey the Stars” shows promise. It works as a DS title, though I couldn’t help but wonder if the hardware was limiting what Koei could do. It would be perfect on Xbox Live Arcade, WiiWare or PlayStation Network, and the designers wouldn’t be as limited when constructing their stages.

Maybe we’ll get that if this version does well, or more simply, perhaps the later levels of “Prey the Stars” take these concerns into consideration.