This puzzle game was a huge surprise to me, I came across it in the puzzlevideogames subreddit and it just had so much higher production values than most other games in this genre, I got really curious and bought it.

It is a puzzle adventure where you, Hamster Jones the intrepid explorer, solve different types of puzzles to find the treasure of the pyramid. I was a bit skeptical of the theme going in, but it was actually cutely done and I thought the character art was especially great. I would've liked to see even more character interactions and storyline.

There are different types of puzzles, which really solved my issue of feeling tired of solving 874398 of the same kind of puzzle in this type of game. There are 1. sliding block puzzles, which are mandatory, 2. puzzles where you have to control a drone on a grid, these also tend to be mandatory as far as I could tell, 3. puzzles where you rotate a box and blocks fall due to gravity, these are optional and give you cosmetics, 4. decoding puzzles, also optional, and 5. riddle-like puzzles, I think mostly intended for the post-game. I got to the credits roll in about eleven and a half hours, doing a lot of the optional stuff too and having fun, but some of the remaining stuff seemed annoying, so I stopped at that point. I might return to it later. Spending 150+ hours on Blue Prince really made me consider how to try to find the optimal place to quit in a game, and I'm honestly not sure!

I think the puzzles were great and surprisingly challenging. Sometimes I thought the pacing was a bit off - a bunch of easy puzzles followed by a total ?!?. The drone puzzles especially felt like there should've been a few more inserted into the story, because at one point a mandatory one introduced two rather complicated ideas at the same time (or maybe I just missed something). I did get to the credits roll without looking anything up, but some of the puzzles were genuinely difficult even up till that point, and in a very fair sense.

One thing I didn't like was that even though we were in a large pyramid with lots of places to visit, progress often had choke points of a puzzle you absolutely had to complete (often one of the drone puzzles). There were optional puzzles you could try to take a break from the main story, but I found it frustrating that the game was more linear than it needed to be. Also if you are interested in the post-game puzzles, they are behind a choke point like this too. That was when I decided I had had enough for the time being - but again, I might return to it later. The decoding puzzles were also clunkier than the others, especially when it came to the cluing.

There is a very VERY cool something right before the ending, I don't want to spoil it, but if you think you are near the ending, go for it and it will be awesome in a way that recontextualizes everything before it.

For those of you who are here for "Is this a metroidbrainia?" - Not really, there is one knowledge unlock that gates some of the more complicated optional puzzles. However, the very cool something I mentioned above recontextualizes a lot of things in the game, so I'd say that is metroidbrainia-adjacent and if you are looking for those types of experiences, you'll enjoy it. But Hamstermind is primarily a level-based puzzle game. Also please note that I haven't finished the optional and post-game content, so there might be even more.

I played on the Steam Deck docked to the TV and it worked well. It sometimes had a little bit of framedropping in the large main area, but nothing major, I'd say.

All in all a cool experience, and I'm going to be on the lookout for the next game from the developers too!
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Source of the game: Bought with my own money (with launch discount)