Games worth discovering

Hamsterdam | Android

428 View2024-04-11

Rodents to the rescue

📖 Storyline: In the city of hamsters, Hamsterdam, Marlo, a rich, big and fat chinchilla, arrives to turn every neighborhood upside down and for some mysterious reason kidnap all the poor Hamsterdians. With his band of parasites made up of skunks, guinea pigs and mice, he will unfortunately also kidnap Pimm's grandfather who will not hesitate to follow in his grandfather's footsteps, putting into practice his precious kung-Fu lessons and showing off his incredible athletic skills, from which shows an extraordinary knowledge of martial arts, on a par with Bruce Lee, given the reaction times of his lightning-fast technique!

🎮 Gameplay: Our little hero is Pimm who we will control for the entire duration of the adventure, making our way along increasingly numerous hordes of enemies using martial arts. In the advanced stages of the game, in addition to encountering stronger enemies, these will have new attacks at their disposal which will result in mini games and/or QuickTime Events, where quick reflexes and the right rhythm quickly decide the outcome of the battle. Continuing there will be enemies ready to defend themselves with improvised protections such as bottles, sticks and pans, up to real riot shields; in this case we will have to charge his attack by prolonging, tapping quickly on the screen, to destroy the protections and open our way towards the opponent's face with the sound of punches. The map is linear, but it shows genius on the part of the developers, managing to make the settings and atmospheres inspired by the real Amsterdam easily recognizable on the smartphone screen alone! Map that we will travel on board the Ham-mobile, a double-wheeled scooter that will also be indispensable in the bonus levels. It's a sort of platformer where you can stock up on sunflower seeds, the in-game currency to spend in the shop and enhance your kung-fu skills. In addition to the bonus levels, the scooter is also essential for some bosses, where we will have to jump or avoid the bombs that will be thrown by the enemies, always at speed on our scooter! Bossfights are of two types:

1. Bossfight with fixed shot: You must precisely avoid the increasingly pressing and fast blows which, if not dodged in time, will gradually become more and more gigantic!

2. Bossfight to dodge: Either by chasing them and/or escaping with the Ham-mobile from the most varied situations.

Both types of bossfight, in the more advanced levels, will tend to mix, increasing the difficulty of the challenge. We could therefore classify it among fighting games, given the total absence of exploration. The protagonist conveys all the tenderness that was the developers' intentions, and is deliberately the only one easily recognizable in terms of appearance and style from the rest of the hamsters that we will save for the city. We can even customize it through the shop by spending the sunflowers earned during the fights on clothing, mostly aesthetic, or on real additional skills.

🕹️ Controls: After a short tutorial section, it will be the grandfather who will guide us through the first rudiments of martial arts, all entirely managed by taptap and swipe, unlike the NintendoSwicht version which uses the yoicon. Little Pimm can only hit, counterattack and perform a special move to inflict high damage on opponents, but only after filling the appropriate bar. In the first phases we will launch attacks by simply tapping on the screen to knock out our enemies in a few moves, but the mechanics will not fail to evolve, in fact, the next step will be dodging, which works in a very simple way: when one of the enemies is about to attack this it will light up, giving us a margin (actually quite large) of action, it will be enough to swipe your finger to the left on the screen to catch it and stun it, giving us the chance to attack again! But that's not all: Pimm's attack will be even more effective when it is executed with the right rhythm, if we continue to tap on the screen, when the white circle around the protagonist has almost disappeared, the attacks will be even more powerful and will charge the KO bar; this is a move that can be activated by quickly tapping the screen without giving it time to play them. In the levels that follow, in addition to encountering stronger enemies, they will have new attacks at their disposal which will result in mini games or QuickTime Events, where quick reflexes and the right rhythm quickly decide the outcome of the battle. Furthermore, these will be ready to defend themselves with improvised protections such as bottles, sticks and pans, up to real riot shields, in this case we will have to tap even faster to destroy the protections and thus open the way towards the opponent's face to Sound of fists and.. finally knock him out!!! On mobile, the frame rate drops present on the screen, in the presence of hordes of enemies, DO NOT EXIST compared to the Nintendo Switch version.

🎨 Graphics: As mentioned above there will never be particularly large spaces, but only very narrow areas, often to confuse us or try to corner us! These areas, as well as the loading screens or the panels dedicated to the plot, have a colorful and lively style with rounded strokes in a naive style with a light cell shading effect to give it a cartoonish appearance.

🇮🇹 Personal Considerations: It has a simple and fresh gameplay that uses swiping in combination with the taptap for the first time... unfortunately it doesn't always activate especially in the excited phases! It's a title suitable for short sections that will chase the thoughts out of our heads in downtime.

By AlessiaBNERD