Hamster Logic 3D is not what I thought at first glance (that is, it's not a nasty lazy cash grab/asset flip/minimum viable product). I think this was a genuine attempt to make a physics puzzle platformers from amateur developers who don't know what they're doing.
The idea is that you guide a hamster in a ball, and you can move him left or right. Easy enough. No jumping, but we'll still call this a platformer because it does rely on platformer mechanics... and sloppy Unity game physics. There's the other main gimmick... anything that's yellow, you can click on it to remove it instantly from the platformer level. The puzzle/physics come in when there's things on top of the thing you click on and remove. For example you can get the old see-saw catapult happening by putting yourself on one side of a fulcrum, clicking a yellow block to make an object fall on the other side. Really, this has been done in other platformers of significantly higher quality.
On the upside, the game does feature customisable controls and resolution, so at least some of the basic, minimum requirements have been met. Unfortunately there's a number of other technical defects and shortcomings which contribute to the game being difficult to recommend to gamers.
It's absolutely riddled with bugs, glitches, and has zero polish. The whole thing comes across as an unprofessional mess.
The game features lazy minimalist/untextured low-polygon "retro" assets and visuals, making this look like a barely functional 3D game from the early 1990s. The lack of textures is a method that lazy devs often use to disguise their lack of talent/interest in doing the graphics properly and trying to disguise it under the name of "art", or "We made it look bad on purpose", which really isn't something gamers should have to put up with. It's unclear why the developers weren't willing to arrange high quality, high polygon count contemporary assets and high resolution textures for the game. It looks bad as a result of their decisions, and that's just another reason to avoid it.
These flaws make this game fall far short of the professional standards we expect from a modern PC game.
The poor quality of this game is reflected by how many people spent time with it. At the time of this review, SteamDB shows the all-time peak player number was [b]only 5 players[/b]. This is a remarkably low number, and now, the only player activity occurs once or twice a month, presumably someone loading it up to see what it is then quickly uninstalling it. Considering there's over 130 million gamers on Steam and well over 140,000 games for gamers to choose from, the overwhelming lack of interest in this low quality game is to be expected.
So, should you buy this game? Is this one of the best of the 140,000+ games on Steam?
Hamster Logic 3D is relatively cheap at $1 USD, but it's not worth it. The quality problems and defects with this game makes the asking price totally unrealistic. It is impossible to recommend this to gamers here on Steam. This is also competing with over 14,000 free games available on Steam, many of them far better than this paid product.
I can't verify the developer claims that they send 10% of the "proceeds" to UK Blue Cross, besides, it's highly unlikely this made any money at all, no profit = no donation. If you want to support the UK Blue Cross, my suggestion is to give at the office.
[quote][b][url=https://partner.steamgames.com/doc/marketing/profile]Profile Features Limited![/url][/b]
Valve have marked this game as "Profile Features Limited" at the time of this review. This is usually caused by poor sales figures and low community acceptance for the game (to date). Until this status changes, this game will not give you +1 to your Game Collector badge count, appear in profile achievements or any other Steam meta-accomplishments, nor can it be displayed in some profile showcases. If these factors are important to you, it may be worth holding off before buying this game.[/quote]
