LogInMass Creation's Grzegorz Kurek told us about the development of Hamster Playground, discussed the process of working on the game's cosmetic items and game modes, and spoke about perks and bottlenecks when using Steam's Early Access program.
Introduction
Mass Creation is a small indie studio based in Warsaw. Our team has been creating games of many shapes and sizes since 2009. We started as mobile games developers and we made the move to the PC and console market in 2014. Draw Slasher, Run Like Hell!, Corridor Z, and Shing! are just a few of the projects we've created over the years.
My name is Greg Kurek and I've been with Mass Creation since its early days taking on many roles and growing as a dev with our studio. Nowadays I'm mostly concerned with creative direction and production pipeline, filling the shoes of a game designer from time to time.
Hamster Playground
The story of Hamster Playground began with the so-called production babies! During the development of Shing! a lot of the team members became parents, including me. We wanted to take a rest from violent and bloody action games to make something cozy for our kids to have a great time with.
The idea itself came from popular YouTube videos of hamsters running around mazes that kids love so much. Our children are still a crucial part of the development, being the harshest critics of the game. Around 20 people contributed to the development of the game, with around 10 being involved full-time.
Mixing Simulation and Racing Genres
The initial idea was to make a simple racing game with a small training and customization component. It quickly became clear that for some of us, taking care of hamsters in their tiny house is a lot more engaging than competitive racing games. The game is created in such a way that you can find resources to nurse and develop your hamsters (and their home) without taking part in races and vice versa – you can focus on those and skip house activities.
We encourage players to take part in all activities with quests, different difficulty levels, and rewards but never force them to do it. Racing, especially for younger kids, can be very stressful. The older audience on the other hand is more eager to feel the adrenaline rush of an online skateboard drag race against other hamsters.
Creating The Game's Cosmetic Items
The process of designing and implementing Hamster Playground's cosmetic items is a typical pipeline for content creation. From initial reference gathering and attractiveness study (we ask our kids if they like it!) to a concept and production phase. We managed to do tons of content for both hamsters and their house with a tiny team of artists in a fairly short amount of time thanks to their talent and usage of modern development tools. It is a lot easier for small teams to create content nowadays than it was, say, 10 years ago.
We try not to waste resources so every piece of content is used as we believe it will find someone who will love it even if we have some doubts about it. So far we've been asked by our community to remove a single hat from the game. When creating so much content in a small team like ours the challenge can be keeping up with all the different meanings that an item may have in different cultures. Things that are perceived merely as a trinket in central Europe can have a lot of cultural meaning in America, for example.
Working on Hamster Playground's Game Modes
Multiplayer mode is limited to racing, for now at least. Because the Hamster House module and Racing module are so very different at their core we could limit our multiplayer efforts solely to the races. We took a similar approach to fighting games in terms of matchmaking and user experience. When you do something that has been done so many times before you encounter very few challenges in development and have a lot of tools at your disposal.
The main challenge in developing a multiplayer is to start building your online component early in development. It is a common mistake that many devs make and we've made it too many times before ourselves – adding online to an offline game. Races are online from the get-go and that lets us avoid tons of problems we would otherwise encounter.
Races in Hamster Playground are fairly simple at their core thus they do not require too much attention in terms of player synchronization or net code optimization. Simple update at certain parts of the track is enough to keep everything in check. Balancing is made solely through a matchmaking component. A straightforward hamster house level comparison is enough to initially match players with similar skill levels. We can filter them further by comparing win to lose ratio, a stat we do not show in the game to take out the hardcore competitiveness from the racing mode but keep hidden somewhere in the back, just in case.
Technical challenges lay where the porting to different platforms begins. All platform holders have their own backend solutions for online connectivity. Fortunately, we have internal tools to take those challenges head-on with little to no development costs.
The Role of CPU-Driven Hamsters in the Game
It would be a bit of an overstatement to say our CPU-driven hamsters are controlled by an AI. It is a simple mix of ranged parameters with probability. We give different stats to CPU-controlled hamsters and based on those challenge them with similar minigames that players encounter. CPU on higher difficulty levels can solve them faster or get a higher score. Randomness is there to simulate mistakes that players normally make from time to time.
Different stats give CPU-controlled hamsters kind of a character if you will, so playing against Sidewinder can be easy in the maze as he is not the smartest of the bunch but in the skateboard race, he will provide quite a challenge should you encounter him.
Simple solutions are the key to making balancing easy and often you do not need sophisticated AI to give players a fair challenge and believably behaving opponents.
The Importance of Hamster Stats in Resource Acquisition and Racing Modes
The infamous "meta"... One could argue it is the most important part of any competitive game today. Our hamsters have four stats that are crucial for boosting resource acquisition and gaining an extra edge in racing modes. As players adopt more hamsters they can begin optimizing their roster in a way that will let you train those cute rodents to be specialists in certain tasks, races, and tracks. When the game leaves its early access stage we will introduce a couple more low-level mechanics of this kind for players to discover and utilize.
The Early Access Program
Joining the Early Access program was decided early in development. Internal or external testing is good for functional tests and bug hunting, but EA is a chance to introduce the game to potential target players, check your assumptions, and invite players to co-create the game via feedback. We introduced a lot of smaller and bigger changes on request that made the game a lot more accessible and fun to play.
Promoting the Game
Steam Next Fest was the first initial boost for the game. The further player base grew thanks to the Steam search engine and proper naming – searching for "hamster" on Steam will result in finding Hamster Playground on top of the search results.
It should not come as a surprise that social media has a crucial role in marketing Hamster Playground. Super cute animations go well with Twitter and TikTok. The latter can do wonders with a single video that goes viral above 1 million views – we’ve had a few of those.
Collecting and Using Feedback from Early Access
Most feedback from Early Access is, of course, feature requests. Players usually ask for small UI improvements that are simple to implement. They also often ask for features that are already in the pipeline and will be introduced in the near future.
Some players give us ideas for really fun things that often play well with the game loop. Hamster Jobs is a feature that was created on a request from non-competitive players who felt the house component lacked a way to earn resources based on hamster stats like races do. Without Early Access this feature would probably never happen and the game would focus on races as the main way to earn those seeds, bolts, and stars.
Bottlenecks When Using the Early Access Program
There are two downsides to the program. Firstly, the initial boost that usually comes with a game release is used up during the Early Access stage and is somewhat impossible to reproduce when the final version comes out.
Another thing is the reviews from players who do not realize the state of the game is still in development often pointing out a lack of features or content.
The pressure is constant but it is only partially the fault of the Early Access program. The quality of Hamster Playground suggests that our studio is a lot bigger than it is in reality, thus many requests are of enormous proportions. Players demand features that, for a tiny team like ours, could take years to accomplish.
Mass Creation's Future Plans
We have another project in production, one that some of our team members are slowly joining as Hamster Playground development goes into the post-production phase. It is more art focused this time without complicated gameplay mechanics or a multiplayer component.
Early Access is great for certain types of games. Rogue-lite, action, and competitive shooters – to name just a few genres which can benefit from the Early Access approach. Any genre that has a robust endgame and can earn while still in development is a great fit for it.
With our next project, we might look into other options like the Steam Playtest program to show our game to a wider audience a lot earlier in development.