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Sheet P-01 · Project

Hamster Slots

A cute pixel-art idle slot machine, powered by a hamster on a wheel.

Spin the reels, win (pretend) coins, buy upgrades and teach your hamster to run the wheel by itself. Then retire to the Big Cage, grow the Family Tree and eventually open a whole hamster casino.

  • Eight slot machines, a jackpot wheel and a card gamble
  • Every sprite and sound is made in code, no game engine
Play in your browserSee the code
Hamster Slots: a BIG WIN on the Snack Stacker, with coins flying everywhere
DrawingHamster Slots
RepoNXT549/hamster-slots
SheetP-01

Sheet P-01 · Preview

What it does

Sheet P-01 · Working drawing

How it works

  1. You spin

    Each spin picks the reels from a seeded random roll and pays by the machine's rules: paylines, ways or hold & spin.

    no real money, ever

  2. The rules decide

    All the game's maths lives in src/logic/ and never touches the page, so the tests and the balance simulator run it without a browser.

  3. The view draws it

    Sprites are drawn as text in src/view/art.ts. The bigger scenes are painted pixel by pixel in code and every sound is made in the browser. No game engine.

  4. It saves itself

    Progress is kept in your browser and keeps earning a little while you're away. Menu, then Save backup, gives you a code to move it elsewhere.

hamster-slots/README.md

A cute pixel-art idle slot machine, powered by a hamster on a wheel.

Play it in your browser: https://nxt549.github.io/hamster-slots/

A BIG WIN on the Snack Stacker

Spin the reels, win coins, buy upgrades, and teach your hamster to run the wheel by itself. When you run out of coins, the hamster goes on a food delivery, so you can never get stuck. Later on, retire to the Big Cage, pass Heirloom Seeds on to the next pup and grow the Family Tree.

All coins are pretend. There's no real money in the game, and nothing to buy with real money.

What's in it

  • Eight slot machines: Old Clunky, the Snack Stacker, the Burrow Bonanza, the Pouch Palace, and for the late game the Hamster Maze (243 ways), the Acorn Vault (hold & spin), the Big Cheese (a multiplier wheel) and, after the Great Migration, Moving Day (boxes that all open into the same symbol). Paylines, bets, wilds, free spins, a jackpot wheel with four pots, and a card gamble.
  • Upgrades for your hamster and for every machine: payouts, auto-spin, Luck, new symbols, Pays Both Ways, Lucky Pennies (wins that pay double) and more. Some unlock as your family grows (rebirth upgrades) and some with diary stickers (sticker upgrades), and the Hamster Helper can buy the cheap ones for you.
  • Retirement and the Big Cage: every seed you hold pays a bonus (up to the seed jar), or plant it in the Family Tree for a trait the family keeps forever.
  • Machine Stars: max a machine's upgrades and rebuild it for a star it keeps for good.
  • The Great Migration: once the Family Tree is fully grown, the whole family can move to a new colony and start again, taking Golden Whiskers for perks that last forever. Colony Trials (a life with a twist) pay whiskers too, and the Wise Elders can retire and restart for you.
  • The Capsule Machine: Hamster Tokens from your Hamster Diary buy skins for the hamster, its hat, the wheel, the machine and the room, and everything you wear gives a small buff.
  • The Hamster Casino: roulette, blackjack, a hamster derby and Seed Drop, played with pretend Casino Chips you earn by spinning (or buy with coins). Every table shows its odds, and chips only buy prizes: boosts, a Luck charm, tokens and three skins you can't get anywhere else.
  • The Family Casino: after the Great Migration the family opens its own casino. Hamster guests play cabinets of your machines, and the house's share of their bets fills a till with Takings, even while you're away. Spend them on more cabinets, decor and staff, or on chips and tokens.
  • It saves by itself, keeps earning a little while you're away, and has a save backup code (Menu → Save backup).

What changed in each version: CHANGELOG.md. Every update has a name, like 1.3.0 "The Hamster Casino", 1.3.1 "Nuts & Bolts" (the upgrades update), 1.4.0 "The Great Migration" (the mega rebirth), 1.5.0 "The Glow Up" (a whole new look) and 1.6.0 "New Digs" (the first part of a new look for everything around the cage: wood, paper and brass).

Running it yourself

You need Node.js (with npm).

  • Windows: double-click play.bat. It installs what it needs the first time, starts the game on http://localhost:8765/ and opens your browser.
  • Anywhere: npm install, then npm run dev, and open the address it prints.

Other commands: npm test (the tests), npm run build (the players' version, in dist/), npm run preview (try that build), npm run sim (the balance simulator).

How it's made

TypeScript and Vite, with no game engine and no UI framework. The game rules live in src/logic/ and never touch the page, so the tests and the balance simulator run them without a browser. The sprites are drawn as text in src/view/art.ts; the bigger scenes (the cage and the room around it, the wheel, every machine's cabinet, the family's tree) are painted pixel by pixel in code; and every sound is made in the browser.

  • AGENTS.md: how the project is built and the rules for working on it (read this first).
  • DESIGN.md: what the game is: every system, the maths behind the machines, the roadmap.
  • PORTING_NOTES.md: the platform plans (web, itch.io, Steam, phones) and the logs of decisions, balance changes and playtests.