Hamster Simulator POSTMORTEM
Hamster Simulator is a game jam game about seeing how far and how fast you can go as a hamster running on a wheel. Endless games are great for game jams because they offer a lot of playability for creating a game in such a short time. People can play them for as long as they want and the game getting repetitive isn’t an issue as they are meant to be short, quick playthroughs. For Hamster Simulator, the whole premise is making the hamster run fast by spamming the right key as much as you can. The more cycles of the Hamster Wheel, the more your hamster levels up and you can choose upgrades to max speed, acceleration, and endurance. I thought that the gameplay might be too simple, but like Cookie Clicker for example, people actually loved the game and just seeing how fast they can make the hamster go. It’s my most popular game with 841 browser plays. :)
This game was created for the Ludum Dare 47 with the theme “Stuck in a Loop”. I had a few different ideas but I decided to go with simulating a hamster running on a wheel as two of my best friends in college had just gotten a pet hamster. I had also been inspired on a video I had seen on rotoscoping for pixel art. The basic process is you take a video, shrink it down to very low quality, make it into a gif, and then you can fill it in with color to create a smooth pixel art animation. So, this game was also a fun surprise for my friends to see their pet hamster turned into a fun video game. :)
After the game jam, one key lesson I learned was introducing hotkeys for upgrading the hamster’s skills. The core gameplay mechanic was spamming the right key, so opening up a menu and clicking which skill to upgrade distracted from that. Now you can upgrade with the Z, X, and C keys and easily keep spamming the right key. I also later improved the color scheme and added particle effects to make it more exciting and rewarding.
The two most awesome things to come from this game were first seeing everyone post their results, seeing how much people leveled up their hamsters truly surprised me how far people got in like hundreds of levels just for fun. Secondly, it was at one point the top search result for “Hamster Simulator” on Bing, which was pretty cool to see the popularity of the game reaching that high. So, how far and how fast can you get your hamster to go?
Hamster Simulator
Play as a hamster stuck running on a hamster wheel ! How fast can you go ?
More posts
- Hamster Simulator Top Search Result on Bing!Jan 22, 2021
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