Rules (Trails and Enclosures)
HammyTurf is a territory game. Leave your turf, loop around and come back, and everything you enclosed becomes yours. While you are outside, though, the trail you leave behind is your weak spot. This page explains trails and enclosures, and the rules that decide who wins.
Trails and enclosures
- When you join, you start with a small circular patch of turf somewhere on the stage.
- Leave your turf and you draw a trail (a tail) along the path you travel.
- Return to your turf and you claim everything enclosed by your trail and your turf. If an opponent's turf lies inside the loop, it becomes yours too.
- While you stay inside your turf, no trail is drawn, so you are safe.
A bigger loop claims more area at once, but it keeps you outside longer, so the trail is exposed longer. That trade-off between greed and caution is the heart of the game.
Taking down and being taken down
- If another player steps on the trail you are drawing, you are out, and all of your turf goes to the player who stepped on it.
- Step on an opponent's trail and you take them down and claim all of their turf.
- Stepping on your own trail does not eliminate you. The trail simply rewinds to that point. This is handy for shortening a trail after a detour.
- Once eliminated, you watch the rest of the round. Press "Play Again" on the result screen to rejoin as a fresh hamster.
Hits are judged at the center of the body
Both trail drawing and step-on checks use the center of the hamster's body, not the tip of its nose. Brushing a line with the nose counts for nothing in either direction.
If you passed an opponent without taking them down, or it looked like a hit but you survived, this is why. To be sure of stepping on a trail, make the center of your body cross the line.
Everyone moves at the same speed
Speed is the same for everyone and never changes with rank or turf size. You cannot catch a hamster by chasing it in a straight line, and you cannot outrun a chaser either. What decides the fight is reading the shortest route to the opponent's trail and moving so that your own trail is hard to reach.
The stage
- The stage is circular. You cannot leave the edge, so running along it leads to a dead end.
- Up to 24 hamsters share one stage at the same time.
- 🌻 Sunflower seeds are scattered around the stage. Their effect is explained in Sunflower Seeds and the Space Meter.
- The round ends when the stage fills up with turf. See Rounds and Ranks.
In Team Battle some of these rules change, for example teammates' trails are safe to step on. See Solo Match vs. Team Battle for the differences.