Hamster Than Light

Overview

Captain a mech through procedurally-generated worlds and crewed by procedurally-generated hamsters.

Pause and unpause time freely to strategize and give orders to your crew.

Upgrade your mech by collecting Cheddar from fallen enemies.

Defend an overgrown planet Earth from nefarious alien invaders!

This game was made in seven days for the 2023 7DRL challenge. We scoped ambitiously and didn't get to everything we wanted, so there may be bugs or evidence of planned features like head modules and hamster abilities.

How to play

Concept

You control two hamsters, and through them, a giant mech!

The mech consists of five parts:

• A left and right arm for weapons
• A core module that controls the mech's shields and rotation at the hips
• A leg module that controls the mech's movement
• A head module that can perform special abilities (not implemented)

A module will stop functioning without energy. Send a hamster to that module to spin the hamster wheel and produce more energy!

You cannot control modules that do not currently have a hamster in them. Unpiloted modules will simply continue to do what they were doing, as long as they have energy.

Controls

To move a hamster, click on the hamster's details panel, then click on the module in the mech map.

To control a module, click on the module in the mech map, then use the dial, sliders and buttons on the module details panel. Keep in mind you can only use the controls while a hamster is in the room!

You can pause time by pressing P. This lets you send orders to hamsters and adjust settings on the mech that will take effect once time is unpaused.

At the start of each level, you have the chance to upgrade equipment on your mech. Interact with a module console to purchase an upgrade --- but be aware it costs cheddar, which you can only get by slaying enemies.

Credits

Zebulah: Programming, combat design

plasmastarfish: Programming, hamster portrait art

Airborne_Manatee: UI art

PinkLemon8: Player, enemy, environment art and character animation.

TizianMusic: Music, SFX

superduperpacman42: Additional programming