A Hamster-Voyeur Sim That Needs To Be Played At 2x Speed
I’m a little too cynical and self-conscious to truly enjoy the dating sim genre, but I’ve got a huge amount of respect for how weird it is. Maybe I’ve not dived deep enough, but most of the games that I’ve played refuse to explore your ‘orthodox’ relationships. Someone will inevitably turn out to be a sword, pigeon or bookcase. Love will have to transcend vampirism, alien invasion or demonic possession.
Sweet Hamster Days isn’t technically a dating sim, but that’s only because there isn’t a romantic payoff for your character. Everything else is very definitely dating-simmy. You are a reincarnated hamster (or are you?), and you were once a romantic interest for three attractive sisters. Now, you are their pet. They don’t know you’re actually their paramour, Kota Koruno, and there’s no good in telling them now that you’re a rodent. So, you jump through all the hoops of a dating sim – choosing who to spend time with, listening to them confess, watching them frolic about in lingerie – but without a happy ending. Because you’re a hamster.
I’m Never Undressing In Front Of A Hamster Again
I have to be honest, I was distracted throughout Sweet Hamster Days. Part of me was worried about the poor hamster. It kept hopping into bed for naps with the three sisters – Himari, Futaba and Miyu – and I worried that he was going to get flattened when they flipped over. They kept offering him pudding and I wanted to swat it away and say “seeds for the hamster, people!”. These are not the types that I would leave looking after my pet while I was on holiday.
I was also distracted by the poor actors in Sweet Hamster Days. They’re all perfectly good at their jobs, but they have to lean into the camera every so often (Sweet Hamster Days is always told from the hamster’s POV, presumably to avoid having to wrangle an actual hamster), and look adoringly as they tickle the camera, wipe it with a cloth, or feed it with a spoon. This likely isn’t the gig they imagined when they got into acting.
To be fair to them all, they commit wholeheartedly. Sweet Hamster Days tells the story of three sisters, all living together and trying to find their way in the world. Himari is the eldest, and she’s the one with the full-time job. She’s trying to cover the financial demands of their flat, but it’s pushing her into alcoholism and – unexpectedly – a desire to try out various uniforms when she’s alone. Futaba, the middle sister, is job-hunting, but she has lingering guilt over a discarded ballet career and her (non-existent) waistline. Miyu misses her estranged father and has been skipping school to work in a cafe which she thinks he frequents. Miyu’s actor is the one who seems to be the most confused about what’s happening.
Hamming It Up With Hamsters
Meanwhile, all of the sisters dream wistfully of Kota, wondering where he might be, and whether they will end up married to him. You might begin Sweet Hamster Days wondering why they don’t know that he or (you) is dead, but that gets covered in cute moments. Mostly, you are nudging them with your wet hamster nose, trying to get them to resolve their issues with each other, and find the future that best suits them.
I have complicated thoughts about Sweet Hamster Days, but the characterisation and plot aren’t among them. The girls are all trying to help or get out of the way of each other, but unwittingly hurting each other at the same time. Their familial awkwardness is handled well, and Sweet Hamster Days is at its best when it unites the sisters in the final third of the game. They have become each other’s enemies, and they take turns to realise it.
But it’s what you do – or what you don’t do – in Sweet Hamster Days that gives me those complicated thoughts. I’m not sure whether it’s because of the visual direction, or a cultural difference in how live-action sequences are presented, but the FMV in Sweet Hamster Days is extraordinarily slow. The sisters go about their day, performing chores or other tasks. And they stop to play with the hamster, tickling him under the chin. But there are precious few moments where you have to sit up and pay attention, reading the subtitles or making a decision. The pace is glacial.
Slamming The Keyboard In The Hope It Speeds Up
Being an FMV game, you can’t speed up these sequences, and skipping them – only accessible by the pause menu – means you miss swathes of important dialogue, as it takes you straight to the next choice. You have no choice but to wait. After three or four hours, I simply couldn’t do it any more. I found my hand reaching for my mobile phone, skimming through articles while I waited for someone to say something that demanded a reaction from me.
In the first couple of hours, I wondered if I was missing something. There’s a representation of the hamster in the bottom-left of the screen, and you can prod it to make sounds. I wondered if I should be using these to generate a reaction. But the hamster is just there as a toy – something with no bearing on the gameplay. I also wondered if I should be clicking away at elements on the screen, as the girls often lose things and you can clearly see them in the video. But no: the game is very clear when it wants you to get involved, and the game screen isn’t it.
When you DO get involved, it’s fairly limited. You get periodic choices, and while they do have an impact on the gameplay – often one path leads to hamster-death, while the other one progresses the story – they become predictable. You will often have a choice between gooning at the girls, or interrupting them. Gooning is never the right choice: you need to be stopping them from falling asleep or missing meetings. Intervention is always the correct path.
A Surprising Amount Of Death
If you do fail, it’s also somewhat unenjoyable. You can die in Sweet Hamster Days, and that death will scoot you back to the main timeline screen. Once here, you need to select the scene all over again, skip to the choices, and make the alternative choice. It’s too long-winded to be cheeky and fun.
Playing Sweet Hamster Days, I wanted to attack it with scissors. Edited down, it could have been so much more entertaining. There’s some good material here: the performances, when the actors aren’t lounging about in bath robes, are pretty good. The conflicts between the sisters are well handled, and the fate of Kota is different from what you might think.
But surrounding them all is dead-air. Awkward silences, camera-tickles and lingering cleavage shots mean that the pace is incredibly slow. Sweet Hamster Days could have been one-third of the length and the score would have been much higher.
Sweet Hamster Days looks like it might make you a little hot under the hamster-collar, but it’s so slow and padded out that you’ll get bored of the waiting.
Important Links
Buy from Steam – https://store.steampowered.com/app/4390720/Sweet_Hamster_Days/
