As a former child with unrestricted access to the internet in the 2000s, Habbo Hotel did irreparable damage to my psyche, as I’m sure it did for many other late millennials. Nostalgia is a hell of a drug though, which makes the fact that Habbo Hotel: Origins is heading to Steam all the more enticing.
Origins is essentially Habbo Hotel’s answer to WoW Classic—a stripped-back version of the social MMO that’s closer to its original browser days than… whatever NFT nonsense it was touting around back when that was a thing. It’s described as “Habbo as it was in 2005, lovingly restored,” launching last summer as a standalone launcher for PC.
Our own Harvey Randall dove in to try it out when servers went live, writing that Origins felt like “some ancient insect preserved in amber.” Of course, it had taken no time at all for folks to resurrect bygone traditions like blocking the pool ladder while declaring it to be closed, a scenario old Habbo heads will be all too familiar with.
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“Habbo Hotel: Origins, truthfully, feels like stepping into a portal to a time where the internet was wild, anachronistic, and had an entirely different set of ways in which it’d scar unsupervised children for life,” Harvey summarised.
It seems as though the year since launch has been fruitful enough for the team to want to take things to Steam. “Habbo Hotel: Origins is in a solid spot feature-wise,” a blog post on the Habbo website reads. “So now comes the fun party: spreading the word and pulling back some of the Habbos who’ve drifted away (and finding legendary new ones too). One big step? Steam. It’s only the biggest PC and MacOS game store on the planet.”
The game’ll be getting its big Steam launch “later this year,” so sometime in the next three months. I can’t lie, I’m tempted. I haven’t had the opportunity to check out Origins yet, and a Steam release feels like the perfect opportunity to relive my youth a little. Even if it’ll inevitably be 20 minutes of me poking around, going “I remember that!” to myself before logging off and never playing again. For the memories.