Monday morning. Shared room. $100 in your pocket. The alarm goes off.
The wheel begins.
THE HAMSTER WHEEL is a satirical life-simulation strategy game about the
one resource nobody sells: your time. 60 hours a week. Spend them well
or at least spend them funny.
ALLOCATE YOUR WEEK
Every turn is one week. 40 hours for weekdays, 20 for weekends. Visit 8
locations: the Job Center, University, Bank, Shopping district, Flea
Market, Community center, your Work, and your Apartment. Every hour you
spend is a trade-off.
Work longer or study harder? Save up or splurge? Hit the gym or pull an extra
shift? There's no right answer, just better and worse ones.
FIVE PATHS TO VICTORY
Wealth: Stack cash and investments until you're embarrassingly rich.
Career: Climb the ladder to VP before your rivals do.
Education: Collect degrees like trophies. Yes, all of them.
Wellbeing: Achieve inner peace while everyone else has a breakdown.
Self-Actualized: Balance all four. The hardest win. The most satisfying.
Set your own victory conditions. Define what success looks like.
RIVALS WHO WANT YOU TO FAIL (six included; three more in expansion packs)
Morgan grinds 80-hour weeks and talks about passive income.
Parker networks obsessively and uses the right keywords.
Quinn reads every book and corrects your pronunciation.
Chip has been playing this game since before you were born.
Sage meditates through every crisis you're currently having.
Reese makes no plans and somehow keeps up anyway.
Blair turned their phone into a business model.
Finley lives on nothing and calls it philosophy.
Devon believes in you. And will still beat you.
Each rival has a distinct strategy and personality. Beating them requires
understanding how they think.
THE ECONOMY IS NOT YOUR FRIEND
Prices fluctuate. Tariff announcements tank your grocery budget. Crypto pumps
and dumps. The Fed raises rates. Your landlord raises the rent.
Weekly news events create real economic pressure; the same decisions that
worked last turn might not work next turn.
MASLOW'S HIERARCHY (AS A GAME MECHANIC)
Your Wellbeing score is built from the bottom up: Safety → Security →
Belonging → Esteem → Self-Actualization. Neglect your basic needs and your
whole pyramid collapses. Eat, sleep, and maintain your housing — or watch
your higher ambitions crumble.
WEEKENDS HAVE OTHER PLANS
Weekend events disrupt your savings, your schedule, and your dignity.
Your landlord shows up. A "passive income" opportunity appears. Your
situationship texts. Not everything can be optimized.
REAL STRATEGY, APPROACHABLE FEEL
- Turn-based: no time pressure, play at your own pace
- One turn = 2-5 minutes, perfect for commutes and short sessions
- Solo vs AI or Hot Seat multiplayer for 2 players
- Character traits for customized playstyles
- Save and resume anytime
A MODERN CLASSIC
Some of the best games are built on a simple truth — time is your most
valuable resource. The Hamster Wheel takes that idea and drops it into
the chaos of 2026, where gig economy side hustles, crypto crashes, and
tariff wars make every decision feel personal.
FREE TO TRY
Play your first 14 weeks free — full gameplay, no restrictions. One one-time unlock for the complete game. No ads, no subscriptions, no energy bars.
The rat race is still running. Ready to play?
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