Hamster Playground

Genre: Arcade / Simulation

Players: 1-4 Competitive (Local / Online)

.

Review:

Hamster Playground, released in 2024 on PC, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch, is a family-friendly free-to-play game with Arcade and Simulation elements with just a hint of Virtual Pet as well, in which players take care of a virtual hamster, dress up them and their environment, and have them play minigames.

Or, to be more precise, minigame, as all but one of the minigames here, as well as some cosmetics, are locked behind paid DLC purchases. As monetization goes this is one of the less-egregious ways for a game to make money, and while the game has multiple currencies, as far as I can tell none of these are tied to real-life purchases.

The presentation here is overall pretty good, with some nice-looking 3D environments and characters, with the hamsters themselves looking appropriately furry, and some very good animation, though this animation is exaggerated and cartoony in a way that wavers back and forth between having them move like real-life hamsters and having them moving in a human manner. It’s a bit silly, but it works well enough, as this game doesn’t seem to be taking itself too seriously. This is all backed by an upbeat soundtrack that gets a bit repetitive and annoying before too long. There are other songs as well, but… well, they’re behind paid DLC.

This game is more or less split into two halves. On the one hand, you have the Simulation side, which borders lightly on Virtual Pet without going too deep into it. Your hamster has multiple gauges (food, water, sleep, fun, potty, and shower) that players are supposed to keep an eye on to ensure their hamster is in good shape, but it doesn’t feel like taking care of a real animal so much as just performing tasks when you’re told to do so. This is done through a Graphic Adventure-style “point and click” interface where you point a cursor at the thing you want your hamster to do, and they obediently obey (when they can manage to get over there).

Beyond simple necessities, there are also various pieces of equipment you can use to “train” your hamster to improve their stats in an RPG-like manner, and you can spend resources to improve the rooms or purchase items to decorate them or dress up your hamster. There’s not really any skill or thought that goes into any of this, it’s just a matter of selecting the thing to do and it gets done.

This takes us to the other half of the game, where you’ll be earning a lot of those resources you need in the first half, the minigames. The minigames here are all simple, but the only one that players can access for free is a “maze” game, which is basically a series of “QTE”-like simple one-button challenges (press the button at the right time, select the matching card, mash the button, etc.). There’s not much depth here, and the fact that your performance here is influenced by the “training” done earlier means that your success here is just as tied to grinding as it is to your actual skill at the QTE segments.

In the end, Hamster Playground succeeds at being cute and largely inoffensive, but there’s just not much to do here that’s actually fun. The Simulation elements are mindless and feel more like work than fun, and the Arcade elements are shallow and the way the game ties them to tasks in the Simulation half makes any need for skill here seem pointless. For a young child amused by the silly animations of the hamsters, this game may be worth a look, but for most players there’s just nothing worthwhile here to latch onto.

tl;dr – Hamster Playground is a family-friendly free-to-play game where players “take care of” a hamster in a manner vaguely similar to a very light Virtual Pet game, and then have them tackle minigames (just one unless you pay for DLC). The game succeeds at being cute and largely inoffensive, but there’s not enough depth to keep things entertaining here, and playing the game just feels like doing simple tasks rather than actually playing. Unless you’re a young child with a fondness for furry critters, this is not worth your time.

Grade: C

^{You can support eShopperReviews on Patreon! Please click HERE to become a Sponsor!}

^{This month’s sponsors are Ben, Ilya Zverev, Andy Miller, Homer Simpin, Johannes, Francis Obst, Gabriel Coronado-Medina, Jared Wark, Kristoffer Wulff, and Seth Christenfeld. Thank you for helping to keep the reviews coming!}