Way back in my school days, I had a classmate who adored hamsters. When we were allowed to browse the internet, he used the time to look up hamster-related things, eventually coming across a site called the Hamster Republic. This site was home to Bob the Hamster, a sort of mascot that the site’s creator, James Paige, used from various projects. One of the most notable things was a little RPG called Wandering Hamster that came with its own editor.
Our story begins with the honest Lord Hasim being overthrown by the evil Lord Broaste. Upon hearing this, Bob the Hamster joins with Esperanto enthusiast Misa DuHamstre (James himself in the older versions of the game) to investigate and restore Hasim to the throne, after which begins a number of wacky misadventures.
Wandering Hamster is an odd little game as far as story is concerned. In a lot of ways, it’s episodic: Bob receives a quest, gets joined by unusual teammates, complete the quest, explores to find another quest, rinse and repeat. There might be a subtle overarching plot, but… Well, I’ll get back to this.
The cast of characters is colorful to say the least, though most NPCs in the early part of the game are mostly giant bipedal hamsters. As Bob travels, he meets and recruits characters like a wiener dog in pants who just wants to go home, a pair of mysterious cat ninjas, a boisterous Viking, and a crew of penguins. Interesting, the Viking is one of the only humans encountered in the whole game; as mentioned earlier, the creator had his avatar in the game but replaced him with Misa when one of his daughters asked why there weren’t any girl hamsters.
Gameplay is pretty bog-standard ’90s JRPG, mostly in the vein of Final Fantasy VI. There’s your standard overworld with random encounters, shops and inns, magic system… If anything, it’s an ode or even parody to those very RPGs. It likely doesn’t bring anything new to the table but that doesn’t stop it from being entertaining.
As far as visuals and audio are concerned, it feels like your standard MS-DOS game from the ’90s, which makes sense honestly. The animation is a bit limited but accomplishes what it needs to. Same goes for the music, as a number of tracks aren’t anything special, though there are some standouts.
The main problem with Wandering Hamster is that it’s incomplete. This wouldn’t be a huge problem… If it weren’t for the fact that it’s been in development since the late ’90s. When I first played it, I could get as far as defeating Lord Broaste. The most recent version I played gave me access to the penguins’ pirate ship, adding maybe a couple of more hours of content. Apparently, the game was meant more as a tech demo for the engine the game’s built on rather than a serious project. That and James Paige’s life getting busier has resulted in the game’s incomplete status. If you want to know how the game would likely go, an outline is available on the wiki.
I revisited Wander Hamster back in 2009 when I found out my hamster-adoring classmate had suddenly passed away. Honestly, it was a fun nostalgia trip for me and a reminder of the good old days. It’s nothing special compared to other PC RPGs or RPG makers, but it might be a something to check out. And the engine the game runs on is free, so it might be worth checking out if you want to create your own RPG.
CaptObvious42 is otherwise the very definition of a nerd. He’s a fan of many things considered retro, with his biggest obsessions being science fiction series both known and obscure, detective shows mostly out of the 80’s and 90’s, video games mostly from the Genesis/SNES years, and dinosaurs.