After the massive airdrop, Hamster Kombat's user base has cooled off. As the game is about to embark on a new season, it remains to be seen if the team can bring utility and value to its token and keep the users engaged.
The most viral Telegram mini-game, Hamster Kombat, shared the storyline for Season 2, which is expected to start this month. According to the teaser, now yesterday’s "crypto exchange CEOs" will manage game development studios. The screenshots show that the team diversified the game techniques and added new objectives, and the tapping is still there.
“Together we will be building a gaming platform, hiring employees, and producing new gaming hits!” – shared the team.
The storyline mirrors the team’s plans to turn the clicker into a holistic gaming publishing platform. Likely, at this stage, Hamster Kombat will continue working as a kind of showcase for other games, but to move further, they’ll need to find better partners or develop their own games like the Telegram clickers' predecessor, Notcoin, does. According to local game chats, users were playing partners’ games only to get extra points, but most were not enjoying their quality. The release of the first games within the ecosystem is scheduled for November.
According to the Hamster Kombat roadmap released right before the airdrop, this year’s goals also include integrating external payment systems and NFT mechanics into the game.
Although Hamster Kombat remains the most popular mini-app in the Telegram ecosystem, the number of monthly users dipped back down below 100 million. The $HMSTR token price halved after the airdrop and reached as low as $0.004. The team offered users a chance to keep tokens in the game in exchange for boosts in the next season, aiming to lower selling pressure and stabilize the price. Reportedly, the team is considering implementing token buybacks using advertising revenue and burning a part of the supply.
After the end of Season 1 and “the biggest airdrop ever,” the hype around the game calmed somewhat. The majority of users felt disappointed by the modest rewards allocated to regular players. The general sentiment around the game drastically changed, and now we are observing many more negative comments. Many users have accused the team of earning on ads and fooling the community. Still, many continue playing the Interlude season, and some even report accumulating $HMSTR.
Although Hamster Kombat has richer gaming techniques than other Telegram mini-apps, the game’s success was obviously more due to free-money temptation than the gaming process itself. It is unclear whether the project team can bring utility, and thus value, to the token by developing its gaming publishing ecosystem, but this is the only way to keep the users engaged after the airdrop. Only 15% of the total supply is reserved for Season 2, and - at the current prices - any plans to pull the same trick by leveraging users’ excitement won’t work twice.