Part 2: A tutorial on railroading.

After resolving to find Bo’s











So, here we have our major quest for the game. Find seven items that Bo can use to restore his magical umbrella to its former glory.


Fair enough; I suppose Panda won’t be joining in the search just yet.









...Well, there goes most of our hampower. Still, I suppose we need someone to go out and find the plot hooks for the later ingredients, and we can’t have too many party members too early!


Oh hey, look who’s out of bed. Guess that helmet of yours helped absorb the blow, huh?


Nice save there, Boss.


Well, you see…





Aaaand fade out again. The game designers are generally pretty merciful about sparing the player recaps.



...More or less.



Aha! Oxnard, you sly dog, you.


And just like that, we’re reduced to just five hamsters standing around the table. And since Bo isn’t likely to be of much use…





…



Gee, you don’t say. Clearly we’re getting softballed into this quest, which is why we aren’t doing the logical thing and starting with red.




...Uh…

That certainly is some interesting logic you’ve got there, Boss.



Well, I suppose we don’t really have any better leads, so…



And then Boss rushes off out to Sunny Peak.

It may not be too likely, but it certainly sounds like the sort of folklore someone would come up with…

Perhaps we can stop him from wasting too much time out there.

And with that, the scene ends and our first real bit of gameplay begins! We can wander and explore to our heart’s content, so long as we don’t encounter any obstacles that need more than these three Ham-Hams to overcome. So let’s start by poking around the Clubhouse a bit.

Obviously, Boss came out of his own room. I don’t believe there’s any way in here, so how about we take a look at the TV instead?

Try something new for a change. Branch out and try something new for a change. Push yourself.
The second luckiest for today is...Libra. I feel that you just might get that sticker you haven’t found yet.♪
The luckiest one for today is...Pisces. It’s time to make a confession! Who knows? It might just lead to love!
Today will not be very good for...Gemini. Small things may get you into big trouble. The park is a lucky place.
Hamstarr is the only show on throughout the game, and his fortunes are basically just random. Quillpaw’s info segments from the Heartbreak LP told us that Panda is an Aries, none of the Clubhouse crew is a Libra, Penelope is a Pisces, and Stan and Sandy are Gemini (because of course they are).
Perhaps I’ll start each new ‘chapter’ with a fortune from Hamstarr, so you can all see what he has to say about your starsigns.

Ah, but it’s not just any blackboard! If you interact with it, and immediately after the dialogue box closes…

Press L, R, A, B. Ta-da! It’s a secret colouring-in page!


You see, the game comes with a selection of colouring-in pictures for the younger players. There are thirty in total, and five of them are hidden behind codes like this one. I’m not actually sure how you learn these codes.



We start off with ‘Hamtaro’ as a freebie, and ‘Secret Admirer’ is the one we just found.

The rest of the stuff in the Clubhouse is just a bunch of flavour text. Some of it is kind of interesting though, and the first visit to Sunny Peak won’t take that long.





Looks pretty much finished to me! Also, didn’t he just arrive?


No surprises there, then.

We haven’t seen it yet on account of not just immediately running out the front door, but this is a pixelated version of the game’s actual map screen. It shouldn’t be hard to see which places we’ll be going in future even from this one.
Ah, and there’s one more important Clubhouse fixture to look at.


He may not be too helpful yet, but Snoozer continues to be the game’s hint system. And also asleep.

The slide is pointless, but fun. With that, I think it’s finally time we headed off after Boss.

Next stop, Sunny Peak!

The starting point is one screen west from where Bo crash-landed, which means this hole must be where Cappy came from last update. A nice bit of continuity.


So, let’s immediately gave a NPC a heart attack.





...Well, that was pointless. Though at least he used more Ham-Chats than most folks.

Let’s leave that dude to his frog cuddling or whatever.


Given that you’re standing on a log I’ll probably need at some point, I’d say almost certainly. Let’s keep moving east…










We clearly aren’t out of the tutorial yet. So, let’s go solve that other guy’s problem as well as our own.



And this has been Puzzle Solving 101.

Another quick ‘Haaam!’ moment fixes the problem nicely.



Well, I’m sure we’ll be able to put this to good use later on. It’s nice to actually have an inventory item too.



If we continue on over to where Bijou was looking at the rainbow, there’s nothing to see except some litterbug’s leavings and Hamtaro refusing to clean it up himself.

Where we actually want to go is the path that was blocked off during the intro.

This is the task tutorial. Basically, each party member is able to interact with the game environment in certain ways, and you cannot perform a task without the relevant Ham-Ham in your party.

This sunflower icon appears over the relevant character’s head whenever you are near enough to a task. As you can see, Hamtaro’s task is picking carrots.

Each task has its own little quicktime event in order to successfully complete it, none of which are terribly difficult.

Successfully completing this task earns us our very first sticker.


If you look in the top left, we also get twenty sunflower points for completing a task. Earn one hundred, and you get either a three or four star sticker.
As for what you do with stickers… They do have a minor purpose we’ll see later, but they’re mainly just a fun little collectible.



Moving onwards and upwards! To unexplored territory!

Ah, more NPCs to chat to. Let’s see what’s up.

All three of the grey-ish hamsters have the same portrait.





Oh, so Boss came to the right place, but for the wrong reason. Hey, whatever works!





Oh, you mean this river? It’s not exactly a long trip.

Ah, yes. The ability to swim is rather rare among hamsters. Enough so that we only met one who could swim in the last game.


But as soon as we take a step to the right…


Ah, a bit of vine-swinging! In Heartbreak, the command for this was Clingie.


Nope, we can’t reach even when Maxwell jumps for it.

Well, time to poke around a little more on this side of the river then.




Ah, yes. We couldn’t have climbed the tree before because the only way onto it is to the right of the hole, which is where the mountain workers were standing.

Speaking of the hole, we can’t go in there yet. Tutorial mode is still in full effect until we get our first ingredient.

Moving on up a screen lets us find Boss rummaging around inside the tree, because that’s totally where you find oranges.










Where’s a slightly more sarcastic version of









Well, that conversation was entirely pointless. Seems that orange hamster is only here to get in our way… Still, better go help Boss up.








The important thing is that we’re able to cross the river now! We did manage to break the vine though…

A nearby NPC informs us about Bijou’s task, plucking the petals from flowers. It almost never comes up, but she’s going to spend a lot of time in the party regardless.









Further west, the game makes sure we stay on track yet again.

Oh, c’mon now. This is just getting ridiculous.
The hamster here just wonders who blocked the road, and hints at our path to progress…



Heading back a screen and on down the vine (past the flower Bijou plucked the petals from), we finally come to the other major part of this game. The NPC is of course there to tutorialise us, but to put it simply…

This game is to minigames what Professor Layton is to puzzles. That is to say, there’s a number of minigames you have to do to progress the plot, and a whole lot of optional ones you can find by poking around in the right places. There’s always a signpost nearby, and ones with sunflowers on them haven’t been done before.


In order to play a given minigame, you have to have the right Ham-Ham in your party. Boss tends to get strength-related challenges, Maxwell gets intellectual problems, and so forth. Hamtaro gets to try this first one on account of being the main character.

Approaching a minigame opens up a menu to Start, Quit, view the Controls, read Tips and to Skip the minigame if you’re having severe trouble with one. (You need a certain consumable item to skip a minigame though, so we must press forward in this instance.) Tips and Controls are basically must-read for the first encounter with a given minigame type.

Being the first of many, many minigames means that “Lily Pad Row 1” is incredibly easy. Failing a minigame gives you a one-star sticker as a consolation prize, while success earns you a two-star sticker and some sunflower points. How many depends on the minigame, some of them even offering bonus points for good performances.

And with that, we’ve overcome our first minigame! This update is already pretty lengthy compared to the first one, but I’d like to close out this first Sunny Peak visit before finishing up.



Seedric here is one of Cappy’s friends, and the victim of one of the villain’s schemes from Heartbreak. Hopefully he’ll get to meet whoever this fellow tree-nut happens to be.

Heading up the vine on this side of the lily pads takes us past the blockade to…


Wow, good thing somebody left one single orange on this tree, or we’d be completely hosed.








Sorry, Boss. You weren’t quick enough on this one.








“Orange Catch” is a one-time minigame, as a few of the plot ones tend to be. While it looks like it should give more points for catching the orange the first time, it’s only worth 20 points no matter what.







I have to say, I like that Maxwell let that one go and just went along with everyone else.





Guy’s got it bad.








And as we fade out on Sunny Peak, we’ll take a look at what happens when we take an ingredient back to Bo… next time.