Love was blooming in paradise. One day fights broke out. Couples stopped talking. Something was wrong. The culprit shows himself: Infernal Trickster is here to ruin everything. It's up to Hamtaro and Bijou to stop him.
Ham-Ham Heartbreak is an adventure game. You walk around, talk to people, solve diegetic puzzles.
Probably the most interesting part of this game is how literally it takes the concept of player verbs. The 'A' button opens up your Ham-Chat window. The game filters out all possible words into a select few that could, make sense to use here. You select it, a cute animation plays, whatever you were interacting with reacts to you. This is how you solve puzzles, its great. You start the game with very few unlocked verbs. As you play Hamtaro will see someone do one and copy it like a baby. Sometimes characters will just teach you one. They made talking to characters into a mechanic. Sort of.
Most of the cutscene will be exactly how you'd expect them. You open conversations by Ham-Chat, but after you will just read through text as the characters speak to eachother. This flows fairly well, and is probably a lot less awkward than selecting each response yourself. You can think of it more as different ways to greet someone.
Ham-Chat is also used for actions, for example reaching a higher place by having our two protagonists stack up, or knocking something down by stomping. It's a very cute system.
The cutesy aesthetic is plastered on everything with a thick coat of paint. They really don't make them like they used to. It's probably just my nostalgia speaking, but this game feels like the Alpha of those cute fansites children used to make in the early aughts. A wonderful time capsule of my youth. If that era interest you, this game is worth visiting just to see all of that in motion.
Ham-Ham Heartbreak is an adventure game. You walk around, talk to people, solve diegetic puzzles.
Probably the most interesting part of this game is how literally it takes the concept of player verbs. The 'A' button opens up your Ham-Chat window. The game filters out all possible words into a select few that could, make sense to use here. You select it, a cute animation plays, whatever you were interacting with reacts to you. This is how you solve puzzles, its great. You start the game with very few unlocked verbs. As you play Hamtaro will see someone do one and copy it like a baby. Sometimes characters will just teach you one. They made talking to characters into a mechanic. Sort of.
Most of the cutscene will be exactly how you'd expect them. You open conversations by Ham-Chat, but after you will just read through text as the characters speak to eachother. This flows fairly well, and is probably a lot less awkward than selecting each response yourself. You can think of it more as different ways to greet someone.
Ham-Chat is also used for actions, for example reaching a higher place by having our two protagonists stack up, or knocking something down by stomping. It's a very cute system.
The cutesy aesthetic is plastered on everything with a thick coat of paint. They really don't make them like they used to. It's probably just my nostalgia speaking, but this game feels like the Alpha of those cute fansites children used to make in the early aughts. A wonderful time capsule of my youth. If that era interest you, this game is worth visiting just to see all of that in motion.