What do you do when a video game genre that promotes casual and wholesome becomes wildly popular? You do what the Romans do and make a video game… or at least that’s what they should’ve done. However, Wonderscope and Team17 apparently had the same idea and brought to life a casual life sim game that, to say the least, isn’t totally Animal Crossing. But that’s a hole I’d rather dig later in the review.
“The world gives you a blank canvas and it’s your job to paint it”
The world of Hokko Life presents a blank canvas and you are its paintbrush. So much so that its opening sequence starts you off in a train’s window staring out rather sleepy. Moments later you pass out and much to my dismay, you eventually got off from a train station without any sort of luggage or even any idea why you tried to get off in the first place. But since it was raining that faithful night, you ran to the nearest establishment only to be greeted by two individuals, one of which is a pink elephant and the owner of the inn that gave you the spare room to spend the night in. While most sane people would say their thanks the next morning to continue their travels, this little one pretty much enjoyed the idea of living in a town with just two to three neighbours… wait, that actually sounds amazing!
But then again, you are being “politely asked” to gather materials to fix the other broken-down houses in the town so you’re basically doing labour without pay at this point as well as the other and many points after this. What makes Hokko Life interesting though aside from doing unpaid labour, is well… doing more unpaid labour such as chopping down wood to create bridges for the betterment of the town and its people or mining ores and resources to create all sorts of neat little things to decorate the small town.
Hokko Life is definitely a fun and colourful community-building sim that has the casual vibes to go at your own pace without any huge time constraints or an impending doom just waiting to happen in the background, unlike the good ol’ RPGs. You can leisurely plan your day by just fishing in the lake or even spending your morning running around and catching butterflies if tending to your farm or mining in the cave grows tiresome. And while that is definitely at its core most of what Animal Crossing has to offer, what makes Hokko Life unique just like how PUBG is different from Fortnite is the fact that the game has its crafting system that lets you make items from scratch. This is something that is definitely a really good feature that separates ACNH from Hokko Life as it brings a unique look for each individual player to customize their own towns with something they can call their own.
Creating items like tables, beds, light posts and all sorts of things from scratch is easily the best thing that differentiates Hokko Life from other sim games in the market. You can even show it off to other members of the community and players from around the world would be able to share and trade their creations which can be placed in each of their respective towns. In a nutshell, isn’t this the real community-building sim? Being able to interact with fellow players and share what they have.
“It doesn’t need to be the perfect game but it could’ve at least tried to do better”
But enough about the cheesy and cringe-inducing speeches about communities and the like. Hokko Life is not a perfect game nor does it need to be. But it also happens to have its shortcomings and issues. This is definitely not ACNH, something that I have stated a couple of times by now and honestly, it should’ve just gone far away from the idea. Being the only human in a town filled with not-so-charming-looking animals kind of puts me off in a weird way. They definitely don’t have the same level of charm that ACNH does and the lack of any sort of voice acting or weird sounds to them is just awkward. Its story? Pretty much non-existent… you got off in a town, got asked to help the town grow by gathering materials while also paying for the fee to build the house just for some random animal stranger to live in it and the rest is history. Not that it needs a story but I would’ve been just happy knowing that my late grandpa sent me a letter to go to this town and start tending the farm again… or something like that.
On the Nintendo Switch at least, creating items also happens to be one of the worst experiences I have had in the game. It’s a great feature, sure, but it’s also frustrating in a way that the cursor sensitivity is set without any slider to mess around with despite having all that freedom to swap around what buttons do for every specific task like the menu, designing, object placement, painting and fishing among a few others. This makes creating unique pieces feel like much more of a hassle that takes way too much time if you don’t have the patience to sit through and drag the slow-moving cursor to move objects in place.
Visual is a mixed bag of good and somewhat bad. The characters in the game aside from being awkward-looking also don’t have a lot of variations aside from having the unrealistic colours of a pink elephant or violet even. The environment and housing do have great detail to them despite some areas where collision becomes a jarring issue as you pass your whole body through some chunky rocks near the waterfall from god knows where all that water is even coming from. However, if you’re still willing to overlook past these issues, there is some fun to be had albeit not a lot to look forward to in terms of content.
Unlike Stardew Valley, for example, you don’t really have a huge and expansive cave to explore. After a few visits to the cave and some tool upgrade thanks to the convoluted merit system (more on that later) I found myself in the deepest part of the cave making that expedition short and unrewarding. And before I even forget, the merit system in the game is one way that tracks your progress while also giving item or recipe unlocks when you do a specific set of tasks. These unlockables are separated into tabs which is great but it also feels daunting especially since some unlocks are tied to a different task that at times you normally wouldn’t do. One example is unlocking the silver pickaxe which requires you to unlock a bronze axe that is needed to chop down redwood that axe is also unlocked by having access to the area with redwood so you’ll need a bomb to destroy the rocks blocking the way to said area and that bomb is now unlocked by… wait for it… making 20 unique items from scratch among a few others. So with the Nintendo Switch version of the game being awful for creating items with its slow cursor sensitivity, making 20 of them isn’t something I would normally do… but I had to.
In conclusion, Hokko Life is a game that promotes casual fun and community building that tries to bask in the success of games like ACNH or Stardew Valley and while it might lack the unique personality to visually differentiate itself from ACNH its item crafting system despite its issues speaks in volumes if you can dedicate yourself to it. It might not be for everyone, especially with its issues and the lack of goals and deep content to keep you motivated but if you’re looking into this just to fill the void of your time by creating a blooming town at a leisurely pace, then I don’t see how else I can stop you.
Developers: Wonderscope, Wonderscope AB
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, Microsoft Windows, Amazon Luna
Publishers: Team17, Wonderscope AB
Reviewed on Nintendo Switch
Grab your copy here https://www.nintendo.co.uk/Games/Nintendo-Switch-games/Hokko-Life-2260790.html
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