Indie developer Visual Art Studio has released a demo of Hamster on Rails for Steam Next Fest. We checked it out!
The adorable puzzle adventure game Hamster on Rails caught our attention, so we decided to try it out. Take a journey to a hamster’s village as you help build an efficient railroad network for collecting minerals, opening chests, and helping hamster friends.
According to Visual Art Studio, players will travel through a total of 64 stages across four different worlds. We only got to sample a handful of the stages, but the ones that we played were decidedly cute and showed a lot of promise for the full release.
The demo starts you out with a tutorial with our hamster friend. It introduces the game’s basic concepts – placing rails on tiles, turning rails, demolishing rails, and manipulating the camera. They introduce new pieces to assemble our rail network, first starting with straight and curved pieces, and then adding inclined pieces.
All told, there are eight different pieces. Plus, all of the pieces have a limited number that you can use. So it’s up to you to figure out the correct combination. It seems straightforward enough at first, but once you factor in the limitations on the number of pieces at your disposal, it forces you to rethink your strategy.
As previously mentioned, you will collect items along the way such as minerals and chests. The chests are optional; if you find a chest and connect it with your rail network, you’ll unlock new skins to customize your hamster friend. There are also optional secondary tasks like collecting a pickaxe for another hamster in the stage.
Overall, Hamster on Rails is fun and unique enough that we’re going to keep our eye on it. You can check out the demo for yourself and wishlist the game on Steam.
