What is Hamster Kombat - a game on Telegram that everyone hopes to get rich from? .

Let's figure out how to play it and whether it makes sense.

What kind of hamsters are they and where did they come from? 

Hamster Kombat is a clicker game that can be played in the Telegram messenger. It offers to turn a hamster into the CEO of a successful company by clicking on a coin (hence the name clicker) and buying improvement cards.

The game went viral on the Internet at the end of May 2024, although it was officially launched on March 25. The sharp increase in popularity coincided with the launch of the project’s YouTube channel and the appearance of many posts: both from bloggers and ordinary users.

Players are attracted not by cool gameplay mechanics (looking ahead, I note that they are not here), but by the opportunity to get real money. The fact is that the creators promise to list the $HMSTR cryptocurrency on the exchange and reward players with coins in their wallets.

The motivation was sufficient for the creators to report on 100 million players as early as June 5th. The Internet is divided into two camps: some talk about how they play themselves, give advice and leave referral links everywhere, while others make fun of players and compare Hamster Kombat to financial pyramids.

How to play Hamster Kombat

The game is implemented as a mini-application that is launched through the bot of the same name: @hamster_kombat_bot. Most often people come to Hamster Kombat through referral links from friends or just people on the Internet in order to receive welcome bonuses. This won’t do much for the player, since the reward is modest: 5 thousand coins (or 25 thousand if the user has a Telegram Premium subscription). But this will help the sender receive special cards - but more on them later.

After registration, you receive your hamster CEO. At the start he is shaved and unsightly, but as he upgrades he will become more solid and fluffier.

Starting account (left) and a little upgraded account (right)

At first, the only way to level up will be to actually click on the coin. “Earnings” depend on the “Profit per tap” value; you can touch the screen with several fingers: this will be counted for individual taps. The energy in the lower left corner is the number of coins that can be obtained.

You can buy boosts to increase the energy limit and the number of coins given out per click. 6 times a day you are allowed to replenish energy for free (can only be activated once an hour)

When the player has accumulated enough coins, he will be able to buy cards in the Mine section. These are various activities and terms related to the world of cryptocurrencies, IT and business. In fact, the names are completely unimportant: the main thing is the passive income that these cards provide.

There are also expensive cards on sale that do nothing: for example, you can give an interview to Joe Rogan or buy a Lamborghini and get nothing for it. The idea is not yet entirely clear: either these are just collectible items without additional value, or we can expect some kind of secret bonus for them in the future.

Already purchased cards can be upgraded to receive more passive income. Often, to open a new card, you need to upgrade another one to a given level.

These are the main mechanics: click on the hamster, buy cards, improve cards, click on the hamster. Repeat in a circle.

There are also two additional activities:

• Collecting combo cards - every day the developers select three cards (one per category) that users must find and upgrade to get 5 million coins. Most often, this task is impossible if the user has not invited friends: he simply will not be able to open the desired card.
• Decoding the Morse code - if you click on the “Profit per tap” item three times, the background color behind the hamster will change, and clicks on the coin will be registered as dots (short tap) and dashes (long press). For entering the correct word you will be rewarded with a million coins. A hint of the word of the day is given on the game’s social networks (separate accounts have already appeared that share answers to these tasks every day).

If you've played Cookie Clicker, My Name is Mayo, or other similar games, almost all of Hamster Kombat's mechanics will be familiar to you. The only thing that might confuse you is the constant references to real cryptocurrencies and companies, but in fact there is nothing behind them, they are just buttons with signatures.

How to make money on Hamster Kombat

Now the answer is clear: not at all (if you are an ordinary person and not a blogger who was paid for advertising). All the millions of dollars that you can earn in the game remain just beautiful numbers of in-game currency, in no way related to real money.

But the creators promise that the coin will be listed on exchanges in June, and existing players will receive a certain amount of cryptocurrency in gratitude for their support in the form of an airdrop. This is how in the world of cryptocurrency they call the mass distribution of tokens to user wallets - usually just at the launch of a new coin.

The exact mechanics of the reward are still unknown, but the X-account announced the following:

The airdrop will depend on earnings per hour and other activity parameters, which we will reveal later, and not on the number of accumulated coins.

Official Hamster Kombat account in X

Nothing is clear about the amount of the reward either: it may well turn out that users who have spent dozens of hours of their lives on the game will get $HMSTR worth a couple of rubles. You may be able to earn a couple of hundred or thousand, but no one promises or guarantees even this.

With a high probability, only its creators will be able to truly get rich from such a project.

Why do people believe this

There is nothing surprising in the fact that people want to get rich quickly without doing anything: such a desire is typical for any person. I want it too, and I bet you do too.

Even if you have well-developed critical thinking, there will still be a voice in your head: “Well, why should you try? They don’t require you to invest money, you don’t need to do almost anything - what if you pass by and miss a good opportunity?”

In addition, there is a successful precedent before our eyes: the $NOT coin, which emerged from a similar clicker Notcoin. This cryptocurrency actually appeared on exchanges, and in the first 36 hours after listing in mid-May, 5 million people received their coins.

Many of the recipients began selling them, and shortly after listing, the value of the coin collapsed by 85%. Later, it began to actively rise in price, although some analysts believe that this will not last long. One way or another, the creators did not lie - and this gives a chance that history may repeat itself. And those who missed out on the $NOT welcome bonus can get a second chance with $HMSTR.

Another reason for trust is that cooperation with Hamster Kombat was confirmed by representatives of the TON blockchain platform (originally developed as part of the Telegram ecosystem, but later became independent). It is in TON wallets that players will be able to receive coins after listing.

How safe is it

In its current form, Hamster Kombat does not pose any danger: it is a simple casual game without bonus mechanics. The main thing is to follow basic safety rules on the Internet: make sure that you are going to the bot using a real link, and do not trust people who may offer to cheat coins or buy coins or an account from you (most likely, they are simply trying to hack your Telegram).

As long as you simply click on the hamster, and the airdrop and subsequent trading have not begun (assuming that all this will happen at all), Hamster Kombat is quite possible to spend a couple of minutes while riding the subway or standing in line. What happens next depends on the integration of the cryptocurrency itself.

Why are there questions about the game?

The most suspicious thing about this story is that the team of creators is carefully hiding. All publications are conducted on behalf of cartoon hamsters, and the videos use a robotic voice: you can’t even guess by accent.

For the same Notcoin, everything was much more transparent with this: it was immediately known that Open Builders, led by Alexander Plotvinov, was responsible for the project, who repeatedly gave interviews and shared updates about the project and listing. The creators of Hamster Kombat are extremely rarely seen in discussions: they usually only publish posts.

The second questionable point is the aggressiveness of the promotion. When promoting, any brand tries to influence the emotions of the audience, to make people feel something that will persuade them to take the desired action.

Social advertising can put pressure on pity so that the viewer donates for an operation for a suffering child, manufacturers of super-ecological shower gel use the desire to take care of their health and the planet, and a flower delivery service will offer to be ashamed of the fact that you generally do not pay enough attention to your mother (but This can be fixed with a beautiful bouquet!). 

In the case of Hamster Kombat, this pain point was the fear of missing out on something important - FOMO (from Fear of Missing Out). This feeling is influenced by both the authors of the project and the players. The first is important to create as much hype around the game as possible and increase the audience, the second is to invite as many other users as possible and receive bonuses for this.

Game mechanics also work to ensure that you constantly log into the game:

• The supply of coins that can be obtained by clicking on the hamster fills up quite quickly: to collect them all, you need to log in every 10-20 minutes and poke at the screen.
• “Passive income” accumulates only 3 hours after leaving the game: you cannot level up, and then close the game and forget about it while you earn millions yourself.
• Some cards are available only for a limited amount of time: if you don’t buy them on time, they will move to the “Lost” section and will never be yours again.

There is nothing particularly scary or illegal about all this, but such marketing encourages a certain dependence and belief in money out of thin air.

What's the result?

Hamster Kombat is gaining immense popularity, as it is a free and easy-to-learn game that allows anyone not initiated into the world of exchanges and cryptocurrency to feel involved in the great sacrament of making money out of nothing. An important role in promotion is played by the imposed feeling of FOMO and aggressive advertising - not only from bloggers, but also from ordinary users who promote the game for the sake of bonuses for their own account from referral links.

Faith in the project comes from cooperation with the TON system and the experience of Notcoin, whose team has already done what the Hamster Kombat developers promise: they released a coin on exchanges and shared tokens with players. Questions are raised by the fact that the authors of the game are carefully hidden and almost do not interact with the audience.

The game can be considered relatively safe and harmless - provided that you are not looking for ways to cheat, do not have serious intentions to close your mortgage with its help and are not going to spend money on tokens in the event of a listing. The maximum you can lose is your time, a couple of phone charging cycles and faith in easy income without investment.