Throwback Thursday: Habbo Hotel

Today’s topic is a bit of a blast from the past. I’m sure at some point you’ve either heard of or played Habbo Hotel.  If you don’t know what Habbo Hotel is, here’s a brief summary.

Habbo is an online vintage pixel-art style virtual community where you can create your own avatar, make friends, chat, build rooms, design + play games and so much more! Almost anything is possible in this strange place full of awesome people… Habbo.com

I was first introduced to the pixel art themed online game Habbo Hotel when I was in secondary school and I was about thirteen/fourteen at the time. It was all the rage at school yet somehow I was still late to the party. After “hanging out” with some people from school I slowly ventured into the world of Habbo on my own discovering more along the way.

Starting off playing mainly in the public rooms there was a variety of different themed rooms including a fast food restaurant, kitchen, Lido which included a diving mini-game (I never did master that game either), various lobbies, theatres and more. Many of these rooms were suitable to host events like when Callie would do meet ups or a celebrity would jump into the game. At which point having one hundred odd players dancing and talking would seriously create some lag.

Apart from the official public rooms that Habbo had created there was hundreds of custom made rooms by players of Habbo Hotel which I spent a lot of my time in. You had your own simple little hang out rooms, game rooms including (Falling Furni, Bingo, mazes and more)  there was even club rooms created for guilds/mafias as well. In fact, there were so many different kinds of custom rooms it was hard to keep up with all the different kinds. Along with some of the custom rooms more the game-themed rooms and club rooms you would usually find your self being raided by other clubs or have someone stood in the doorway dancing or even advertising another room.

Although Habbo Hotel was and I believe it is still is a free to play game, you could then also pay around £5 a month to become a Habbo Club member. At the time when I played this was considered royalty amongst players. The first month you received a cool Habbo Club badge, the famous green and yellow HC Sofa and possibly a different dance you could use. With each month you continued the membership you would receive a different exclusive item. I remember I would spend my phone credit on buying the membership without telling my parents and then they wonder why I had no credit left on my phone.

Overall though the time I spent playing Habbo Hotel I had lots of fun, made some good friends and have lots of memories of the game which I could spend all day writing about. However, it’s nice to see that the game is still around and that people still play and enjoy the game.

Advertisement