Recent reviews by Yikame

S̶h̶o̶v̶e̶l̶w̶a̶r̶e̶ w̶i̶t̶h̶ h̶a̶u̶n̶t̶i̶n̶g̶ A̶I̶-̶g̶e̶n̶e̶r̶a̶t̶e̶d̶ l̶o̶a̶d̶i̶n̶g̶ s̶c̶r̶e̶e̶n̶s̶ a̶n̶d̶ s̶o̶m̶e̶ o̶f̶ t̶h̶e̶ m̶o̶s̶t̶ a̶n̶n̶o̶y̶i̶n̶g̶ m̶u̶s̶i̶c̶ I̶'v̶e̶ e̶v̶e̶r̶ h̶e̶a̶r̶d̶.

Cute hamsters tho

EDIT:

After 50+ hours of hamptering I feel the need to correct this review. Firstly this game is NOT shovelware.

Although the game at first glace appears simple with not much to do, there is a actually a system of either sending your hamsters to work, or completing mini-games to earn currency. The currency can then be used to upgrade facilities through multiple tiers, as well as offering a surprisingly large range of home and clothing customisation. On top of this you must make sure that your hamsters are well looked after in order to work, or well trained in order to do better in mini-games. There are even online multiplayer mini-games (although these can sometimes be difficult to join due to low player-base).

But the thing with Hamster Playground that's in main draw is not the game-play but simply how relaxing the cute hamsters are. The art in-game is really good, and there are a lot of adorable and fun animations for the hamsters, sleeping, playing, training, etc. Even their idle animations are cute, I like when they just sit in that funny stance. It's a great game to simply have open and watch your virtual pets wander around.

I also need to correct my previous statement. The load-screens to my knowledge are NOT AI generated. I decided to grind all the achievements, as any sane person would, which meant a lot of looking at load screens in between races. The more I looked the more I noticed details, like posters that we purchasable cosmetics, which AI would obviously not be able to recreate perfectly. I scanned through the credits of the game and looked up the artists involved, where I found the artist behind the load screens; Malgorzata Gruszka (I found three of the pieces on her Artstation, so I am assuming she did all of them but I could be mistaken). She is an extremely talented 2D/3D concept artist and illustrator with over ten years of experience. She noted that "the biggest challenge was doing the fur" through a program called V-RAY. It was just glancing at these renders, as the fur is still a little off, that at first made me think it was AI as it can produce similar results in that regard. I am extremely sorry and full of regret to ever even compare an artist's hard work to AI generated slop, I will try to do better in the future.

Music is still annoying and hamsters still cute tho :)