Hamsters-in-Cups Hamster Collection cage:

The 3 Apps I will be reviewing today are Hamster Collection, Spoon Pets, and Hamster Life. They are the only apps I know of that involve hamsters being in cups - IF ANYONE KNOWS OF ANY OTHER APPS INVOLVING HAMSTERS BEING IN CUPS PLEASE LET ME KNOW!!

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First let’s talk about Hamster Collection. 

It seems to be the most well known of the 3. It involves collecting hamsters and buying or earning toys for them, setting up the toys in various arrangements around the cage, putting out treats and watching the hamsters interact with the toys.

One huge “pro” of this game is that the very first toy you get - the one that they give you for free during the intro tutorial - is a mug cup!! Also a pro: if you focus on “buying” as many hamsters as possible early on (as opposed to wasting golden seeds on fancy food when you can just give them free food) you will start to earn reward currency faster and faster.  The hamsters you have, the more rewards you get. If you focus on hamster acquisition and watch all the available ads for the first few days you can fully expand your cage within a week without spending any real money.  But there are cons as well: The animations are very basic, and there is no way to get rid of the ads. The ads do not interrupt gameplay and make you wait to continue playing while you watch them - they are small banners at bottom and top of the screen that only appear during certain actions - but they are still annoying and there is no option to pay to get rid of them.

Also, con-wise, there really isn’t a whole lot to DO in Hamster Collection. There are no puzzles to solve or in-game mini-games or anything like that. It is called “Hamster Collection” and that is what you do: it would be more accurate to say that you COLLECT than to say you PLAY.  It is not something that I would find fun to keep up with for a long time, but for a few weeks it is entertaining.

Overall rating for Hamster Collection: OK.

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Next up is Spoon Pets. 

I do not believe this app was ever designed to be a real game, so much as it was designed to be an advertisement for the physical Spoon Pets - the collectible toys you can get at amazon.co.jp and other places.

It is far more annoying than fun.

There is barely anything at all to DO, and it is hard to even BUY anything interesting (without paying real money) since you earn spoons (which are the currency of the game) verrry slowly.

From a hamster-in-cups standpoint, it is annoying that the majority of the animals are NOT actually hamsters, but since they all have the exact same body shape and tail the only way to tell hamsters apart from non-hamsters in by minuscule differences in ear shape (or sometimes nose shape or “hair”). In the case of the squirrel and the bear, there is no way at all to tell that they are not hamsters except their coloration, which is always different for every pet, so you have to just KNOW. Here is a picture of 3 hamsters in cups, with 1 hamster on the ground, plus 2 cats, a dog, a horse, a chicken, a squirrel, and (mostly hidden behind the wheel) a pig.

Overall rating for Spoon Pets: JUST NO.

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Ok, last but far from least we have Hamster Life.

I love this game. I played it every day for over a year, which was how long it took me to beat all the levels of games. There are all sorts of aspects to this game - your cage, the main stage games, the hard stage games, the weekly games, a playground with dress-up, gatcha treats collecting, even social interaction with other players (if you get far enough).  And there are lots of goals and lots of ways to earn new hamsters. Some hamsters can only be obtained by beating games on the main stage. Some can only be obtained by breeding.  Also different SIZES of the hamsters can be obtained by breeding. Some hamsters can only be earned by petting the hamsters you already own. Some hamsters can only be obtained by collecting gatcha treats. And more!  And there are a bazillion cage setups. You can change the wallpaper, the bedding, the cage bars, the toys, the food (which you only have to buy ONCE and you get an unlimited supply of that type), the food DISH, the water bottle, the wheel, the house.  Eventually you get to visit other players’ cages, see all sorts of adorable setups, and get rewards for petting THEIR hamsters too.

The ONLY real problem (which is only really a problem at all from a strictly hamsters-in-cups standpoint) is that, well... while you CAN buy a cup house which the hamsters DO go inside of, they disappear from the screen when they enter any house so you can never SEE them while they are inside the cup-house, and therefore I could not ever get any pictures to post on this blog from the game. There are hamsters inside of a cup in this game, but.... well, here is a token image of a cage setup I had which includes the cup house:

Overall rating for Hamster Life: AWESOME

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(for more cool Hamster Life cage setups, not involving cups, see below the cut)