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Planet Hamster

An idle clicker where you clone hamsters to make money and build a technologically advanced empire.

Team: 4

Role: Programmer, Concept Artist, Texture Artist

Timeline: 6+ months 

Overview

An idle clicker game inspired by playing mobile titles such as Egg Inc and Tiny Miners. In Planet Hamster, the player controls an empire of hamsters. They can be cloned to generate/harvest materials that bring the player money. Earning money allows the player to upgrade their factories, storage, vehicles, and etc. Over the course of the game, a player can hit milestones and move their empire into a new technological era  (i.e. medieval to steampunk). 

Gameplay Screens 

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Main Screen

Research Upgrades

Building Upgrades

Gameplay Interactions and World Elements

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Interactable Flying Object

 

At random times, a flying object or drone flies over the screen. The player is able to tap on it to make it fall. This interaction also gives the player a boost in the money production rate. 

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Art Production Pipeline

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Consistent Visual Design Language

In Planet Hamster, each building on the map has a particular function (i.e. cloning hamsters). The game features different time periods or eras that a player can upgrade to, when their resources and money production have peaked. One of the major design challenges was to maintain visual consistency with the buildings, when the user decided to upgrade.

 

To solve this challenge, each building encompassed similar silhouettes in order to maintain visual consistency. For example, the buildings that clone the hamsters all feature two smoke stacks.

Hamster Cloning Building

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Medieval Era  

 Steampunk Era 

Modern Era

Designing Concept Art For Mobile

During production, strong attention was paid to develop art assets that would fit the mobile platform. Where possible, ornate and complex shapes were replaced with large and exaggerated silhouettes.

Outcomes

What did I learn?

 

  • How to develop small interactions and game-related systems that added to interest to the level

  • Prototyping supplementary game mechanics that supported the positive feedback loop that the core game was trying to achieve

  • Setting up a 3D art pipeline specifically tailored towards creating optimized assets for mobile

  • Creating conceptual art for the world of Planet Hamster, and making it appealing for a broad audience that plays causal mobile games

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