It’s a marble rolling game with a frightening furry twist, as giant space hamsters descend upon the cities of Earth and crush their puny buildings into dust with their balls. Now I’m imagining a much more interesting game.
By balls I mean those plastic spheres powered by tiny rodents that provided hours of enjoyment to children and adults before the days of video games. Sean McCracken’s Hamsteria is a quick and dirty game about fur-fuelled destruction that, with a little more polish, could be as entertaining as it sounds.
McCracken’s idea is solid enough. “It’s kinda what I always wanted to do in SimCity… destroy everything.” It’s just a little light on the execution. Rolling the ball about a sprawling 3D city, avoiding the edges and damaging force fields while hunting for power-ups that increase the size of your hamster’s ball or send out UFOs to clean up dead buildings is entertaining enough, but with only eight unlockable levels as of this writing and little variety, my $US1 purchase was quickly spent.
Still there are good ideas here. The game is time-sensitive, so if you play during the day the city is bright and cheery, drenched in window-lit darkness by night. Future plans include more play modes and a leaderboard shared with the upcoming iOS and Nook versions.
My only huge problem with Hamsteria is this: There is not enough hamster representation. Aside from the launch screen all we see is a ball that is supposed to contain a hamster, but really could hold anything. It’s like Schrödinger’s hamster up in here. More rodents, please.
Hamsteria [Android Market]
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