Yumsters!

Yumsters! (Russian: Нямстеры!) is a series of downloadable games developed by the Russian studio Kranx Productions. The series consists of 3 games, where the player controls the titular characters. All the games revolve around color matching; the first two games use drag-n-drop gameplay, in the third game paths are drawn to control the character.

## Species

### Appearance

    Yumsters are cartoony worm-like creatures. They have large egg-shaped snouts with nostrils, big eyes and pairs of antennae shaped like lollipops. They're depicted without irises (except in the icon for the Android version of Yumsters 2! which has a different art style). They mainly come in 6 colors: red, orange, yellow, green, blue and purple; a Super Yumster circles through all the colors. Their bodies are segmented, but in flexible state they're completely smooth.

Yumsters 2! features female Yumsters: they're depicted with blue irises and shorter snouts. Some professional male Yumsters have thinner snouts in their idle animations.

### Lifestyle

Yumsters are sentient creatures capable of speech and writing who live in a fantasy land in ground holes. They eat fruit of the same color as they are, Super Yumsters can eat any fruit and bite through hard ice. Their stretchy bodies (and with certain criteria - bendy) allow them to consume multiple fruit at the same time. They also enjoy music and can play different instruments. In the first two games, they eat specified fruit to earn money for musical instruments.

## Games

### Yumsters! (2007)

In this game the player must help Yumsters earn money for the musical instruments for their band and win the Grand Prix.

### Yumsters 2! Around the World (2008)

In this game Yumsters travel around the world, meet the professional Yumsters who join their team, and buy the local musical instruments. They visit Egypt, Mexico, Japan, Greece, Hawaii, Italy and France.

This game was ported to iOS by the original developers, and to Java, Android and Windows Phone by HeroCraft.

### Tasty Way (2009)

This game for iOS is vastly different from the previous games. Here, a single Yumster moves along a path, and the player controls him and directs him towards the correct fruit, while avoiding other fruit and obstacles.

The game is no longer available and only a Web Flash copy can be found at this point.

## References

*The download links on the following pages are NO LONGER functional.*

Pages about Yumsters! and Yumsters 2! Around the World on the developer’s website: https://kranx.com/en/our-projects/yumsters/

Page about Tasty Way on the developer’s website: https://kranx.com/en/our-projects/tasty-way-en/

## Trivia

* The game series and a yoghurt brand both being named “Yumsters” is a coincidence.
* A Yumsters themed Birthday postcard was made for Marina Guseva, the producer and one of the two game designers working at the series (not to be confused with the chess player).
* Avatars with Yumsters were uploaded to the game’s VKontakte group. *(won’t be linked due to the website’s login requirement, and abandonment + spam in the group)*

### Yumsters! and Yumsters 2!

* The games use the same desktop icon.
* Although the games were made by a Russian studio, in their Russian versions the characters say “double” in English.
* The games had physical releases as a part of the series “Понятные игры” (meaning “Understandable Games”), which consisted of shareware games’ full versions, distributed by 1C Company.
* The games may refuse to work, giving the error “No Direct3D support”, although with different circumstances.