Hamster Clan

On the 8th day of Christmas, my children played with me… Eight Hamster homes, Seven toiling train lines, Six locking safe keys… FIVE CARLSBERG CHIPS!, Four Sad Snowmen, Three Magnetic Mazes, Two “Unmatched: Witcher” sets, and a reaction game I played with all three!

“Hamster Clan” is a co-operative item-gathering movement game based around the concept of trying to gather corn, clover, and carrots as quickly as possible before all the leaves fall off the tree and winter arrives.

The game it is most like is actually “Alien: Fate of the Nostromo,” which I reviewed as part of our Halloween Spooktacular. This plays very similarly, just without the items to assist you—and, of course, without an alien chasing you.

Essentially, you roll a dice and move that many spaces per turn. You have to gather all the items and bring them back to their location in the den. (Den? Is that what hamster homes are called?)

At the end of every turn, you take a leaf off the tree, which signifies that winter is coming. The main point of the game is therefore to get everything to where it needs to go before winter comes.

To facilitate this, as well as moving with the objects (you can only hold one object at a time), you can also pass objects between players. This helps make moving around more efficient and promotes teamwork. In terms of working together cooperatively, this could be one of my favourite little kids’ co-operative games. Henry really enjoyed it and started to understand how it was better for us to work together than to work on our own.

The real star here is the interactive board, which features a lift, a minecart, and a swing that you can use and rotate or move. This is a really cool extra little nugget on top of what is already a charming game. It really adds to the gameplay and particularly captured Henry’s interest—he absolutely loved sending his hamster down the mineshaft.

In terms of complexity, you should be able to play this with pretty much any kid of any age as long as they have a basic understanding of numbers up to three. This is a fantastic game for promoting teamwork. For older kids, I would still recommend “Alien: Fate of the Nostromo,” but for really young children, “Hamster Clan” is an excellent co-operative game.

Plus, it’s available at TK Maxx at the moment for barely anything!