The FMV game where you’re a hamster being doted on by three Japanese sisters was inspired by its creator’s job as an animal mascot, and Grand Theft Auto 5

Sweet Hamster Days was initially rejected by Steam, perhaps because Valve is more restrictive of games that feature sexually explicit images of real people, or possibly for some other reason we’ll never know. As a designer called Oda told Automaton, “We still don’t know exactly how the platform saw things, but after revising details such as the age rating settings and re-submitting the game, it was eventually approved.”

This is an FMV game where you die and are reincarnated as a hamster named Hamta, the pet of three sisters who seem to spend most of their time gazing lovingly into the camera while pretending to pat you on the head. “We’re calling it a completely unprecedented genre,” Oda said, “a kind of ‘being-taken-care-of adventure game.'”

The project’s overseer, who goes by Katayama, gave some insight into the conception of this deeply strange idea for a game. “Years ago, I worked a part-time job wearing mascot costumes. I realized that whenever I wore a costume, children and elderly people who would normally never approach me suddenly became very friendly”, he said.

The other half of the idea came from a videogame, though not one with an obvious link to an FMV visual novel about hamster-pampering. “I’m a big fan of Grand Theft Auto 5,” Katayama went on to say, “where you switch between three protagonists as you progress. As I was having fun switching between the lives of other people, lives that weren’t my own, I had this idea that it might be nice to have a hamster as one of the options instead of a human.”

Well, that makes perfect sense then. The more prosaic reason for Sweet Hamster Days being made is the boom of FMV dating sims in Asia. “Katayama had mentioned to me that live-action games were becoming popular in China,” Oda said. The Road to Empress series was a recent FMV hit to come out of China, and Korea’s Five Hearts Under One Roof has also been quite popular. It’s only natural a Japanese studio would want to get in on the action, and I guess making your game about someone being turned into a hamster by Truck-kun is one way to stand out.

Sweet Hamster Days is available now on Steam and the Epic Games Store.