FUG It, Why Not?

Two Hamsters Enter emerged from an exchange on the Fragging Unicorns Games (FUG) Discord server during the Kickstarter campaign for Subversion RPG. Following a discussion between beta testers and devs over mech combat mechanics, I used some of the conversational momentum to help FUG reach an important stretch goal on the campaign. Here’s what I said:

“If we can get to $60k on the Subversion Kickstarter, I will make sure a hamster (and other small adorable animals) mech battle game is made. So, let’s start calling up old science lab partners from high school.”

Would you believe it? The Kickstarter raised $61,879, and I was stuck making a hamster mech battle game. I created a problem for myself on the FUG Discord server, and, fortunately, the solution for my problem was something I also found on the FUG Discord server. The FUG Team made writing this game really easy, and I’d like to thank a few team members in particular:

palmerjwm

Palmer was the one who came up with the idea for a one-page RPG, and he also suggested that the primary stats be Mecha and Fuzz. The fact that the final stats were Mecha and Cute instead may or may not be related to the fact that I forgot what Palmer told me when I wrote the first draft and just ran with it. Palmer also showed me a design example of a one-page RPG and gave me the advice to, “Do what you want and have fun.” This game wouldn’t have happened without Palmer.

Opti

It was Opti’s idea to release the game on April Fool’s Day. That way, if I wrote the game in such a way that it affected the lore for Gangs of the Undercity and Subversion, and we wanted to take it back later, we could just say, “April Fools!” Opti gave me a lot of moral support and some advice for how to write an RPG in one hour. It may also be worth mentioning that Opti is the reason I’m a game developer in the first place.

Apathy

Apathy gave me a lot of feedback for the ways my first draft didn’t work. Apathy had two big concerns: (1) that the game is inaccessible to people without social media accounts, and (2) that not everybody has a D100, or even 2D10s, easily at hand. Apathy’s first concern is the reason Two Hamsters Enter has a vanilla mode, and, because of his second concern, I’m going to put up a post soon detailing hacks and cheats that make the game easy to play on the fly.

Jocelyn

Jocelyn echoed Apathy’s feedback, narrowing in on the problems caused when two players have a vastly different follower count on social media platforms. This was another motivation behind vanilla mode. However, I also don’t want players to worry too much about follower count. Having a lot of followers might get you a lot of likes and give you a higher Cute score (Cute is basically the same as Hit Points, with a small caveat), but having only a couple of connections with people you really value might make you hit harder and win the game.

Darrenanigans

Darren encouraged me to double down on what makes Two Hamsters Enter different, namely that it relies upon social media posting to determine stats. This makes it a niche game that doesn’t have to compete with Battletech, Robotech, Lancer, and the like. Because of Darren, I’ve created a genre of games called Social Media Hellsite games. More on that in a later post.

It’s unclear to me, at this point, if I’ve given you any reason to pick up my free, one-page RPG when it releases on Saturday, April 1, 2023 at 6:30am, or if, instead, I’ve convinced you to join the FUG Discord server. If it happens to be the latter, I’d love to see you there. Here’s the link: https://discord.gg/f23BMDab. Just make sure you come back on Saturday or thereafter to pick up Two Hamsters Enter on my itch page.