Muse Games are most widely known for their Guns of Icarus series of airship battling games, and most recently they’ve been busy with the cooperative focused Guns of Icarus Alliance which launched on Steam back in March. They’re not SO busy that they don’t have time to squeeze in a really neat looking mobile game though, and that game is called Hamsterdam. It’s a beat ’em up starring a hamster named Pimm who looks to protect the town of Hamsterdam from the evil chinchilla Marlo and his Rodent Gang, who are terrorizing the town’s citizens and have kidnapped your grandpa. Jerks! The thing that stands out the most to me about Hamsterdam is its novel approach to touchscreen controls, which you can see from this very early gameplay footage released back in April.

As you can see, combat in Hamsterdam is a mixture of quick time style events and good old-fashioned button mashing. I also like the meter that fills up around the attack button which, when filled, slows down time so you can drag and place which enemy you want your super attack to go to. There’s quite a few beat ’em ups on mobile and even some very good ones, but there’s defnitley something lost in translation when “button mashing" on virtual buttons. A control scheme more conducive to the touchscreen is a better approach I think, and I’m really interested in seeing how Hamsterdam turns out when it releases. Muse will be showing off the game at PAX West in just a few weeks so we’ll try to catch a glimpse of it in person then and report back. In the meantime you can find lots more information and adorable animated .gifs on the official Hamsterdam website.