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GO! GO! Hamster Chef!

Help Hamster Chef cook for his animal pals. A fun, innocent game. There is no dark twist.

GO! GO! Hamster Chef!
Exhibit

Help Hamster Chef cook for his animal pals. A fun, innocent game. There is no dark twist.

  • made: March 10 – April 20, 2023
  • for: Spring N64 Style Graphics Jam #2, winner
  • team: six, with Loafsoft
  • role: game design, story, programming
  • platform: PC (Steam, itch.io)
  • status: shipped
  • price: free on Steam

We made GO! GO! Hamster Chef! in six weeks for the Spring N64 Style Graphics Jam #2. It placed first out of 16 entries, and first for "unexpected or surprising elements."

Then people started recording themselves playing it. By the time I first wrote this page, in 2023, more than 80 YouTubers had posted videos of it, for over a million views combined, and I was keeping a playlist of every one I could find. Loafsoft's page now counts more than 300 content creators and 5 million views.

In August 2024 it came to Steam, free, with polish we couldn't fit into the jam and a new ending. As of November 2026 it has 355 reviews there, 97% of them positive, and a 4.7 out of 5 from 285 ratings on itch.io. People still leave comments. A few weeks ago the jam's host stopped by to say it still comes up in their Discord. It has its own TV Tropes page.

the turn

The jam had one extra rule: incompatible genres. One of ours was cooking. The other was horror.

So it starts as exactly what it says it is. You gather ingredients around the village, cook them in your kitchen and ride your scooter out to deliver them to your hungry friends. Then it stops being that. The game never stops telling you it's innocent, and that's most of the joke.

It was Loafsoft's first game, and the first game I'd finished since middle school. I did the game design, the story and part of the programming, on a team of six.

play free on Steam
play on itch.io
GO! GO! Hamster Chef! screenshot

credits