Day: July 16, 2023

writ­ten 7/16/23, updat­ed 7/22/23

Devel­oped by Won­der­scope Games and pub­lished by Team 17, Hokko Life is an adven­ture sim­u­la­tion released ful­ly on Sep­tem­ber 27, 2022 for Steam, Switch, PS4, and Xbox One. It cen­ters around the play­er who comes off the train into a dusty, slow town inhab­it­ed by bipedal, artic­u­late ani­mals, and then works to make it more hab­it­able.

Rat­ing: 2.5 out of 5

ESRB Rating/PEGI: E (Everyone)/3

Price: Paid $9.99 out of MSRP $19.99

Rec­om­mend­ed: Only if you are des­per­ate for more games like Ani­mal Cross­ing

One Word Descrip­tion: Copy­cat

Time Rewind Buy Again? No

• Pros: Cute, sim­ple, easy, design flex­i­bil­i­ty, pleas­ant graph­ics, lulling music
• Cons: Very long title load­ing, unre­fined, unclear, unal­lur­ing, small, game pro­gres­sion

Review

To be fair, I have not fin­ished the game. In fact, I have only been play­ing “for a lit­tle while” accord­ing to my Switch. Also, appar­ent­ly, the game plays hor­ri­bly on the Switch as com­pared to oth­er plat­forms. Admit­ted­ly, if there was a sto­ry of any sort for the char­ac­ter, then I’ve already for­got­ten. I think it might have been that your char­ac­ter over­slept on the train and the small ani­mal town you arrive in is the last stop. You arrive at night and come across a cafe (that looks eeri­ly sim­i­lar to Brew­ster’s The Roost) where some walk­ing, talk­ing ani­mals are con­vers­ing. The ele­phant (effec­tive­ly Brew­ster) offers you a room. Then the next morn­ing, they say more words and send you out to run around the very small vil­lage, except you were sup­posed to talk to the Tom Nook char­ac­ter, a giraffe name Moss. Pre­dictably, they offer you a house, you have to talk to all the vil­lagers, and then they give you some tools.

Sim­i­lar to oth­er social sim­u­la­tion games, you restore the vil­lage back to vig­or by ren­o­vat­ing, craft­ing, dec­o­rat­ing, fin­ish­ing small quests for vil­lagers, land­scap­ing, com­plet­ing larg­er quests for the town, etc. Inter­est­ing­ly enough, you are able to redec­o­rate neigh­bors’ homes as you please, by mov­ing stuff around.

Although I haven’t spent much time in the game, I feel like I already have beat­en it and don’t need to fin­ish it, because all of it is extreme­ly pre­dictable… And why is that? Because unfor­tu­nate­ly, I sim­ply can­not get over the fact that this game is bla­tant­ly an Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off. A mediocre knock­off. If you’re going to knock off a game, it needs to either be on par, bet­ter, or offer some­thing vast­ly unique com­pared to the orig­i­nal game. This (so far) does NONE of that. I think I was about one hour in before my brain shut down so hard that it was a chal­lenge to keep my eyes open.

After the ini­tial play, I tried again with gus­to, deter­mined to give it a chance. Some ele­ments don’t make sense, like: the town’s may­or Rosa, a pink, suit-wear­ing pig, tells you that she (he?) does­n’t have a build­ing in town and you can’t talk to her until the build­ing is fin­ished being made. So…she just became may­or? Or just was nev­er there? Was the vil­lage cre­at­ed a few days pri­or? After wait­ing a day or two, you can vis­it her, and effec­tive­ly the may­or just allows you to either alter hous­es or build new ones for new inhab­i­tants, except you talk to the ele­phant in the cafe for new res­i­dents? Play­ing on, the slow pace of the game even­tu­al­ly takes you to the res­i­dent ento­mol­o­gist who likes bugs and gives you a net. Cool. I love col­lect­ing things. Every time you catch a new but­ter­fly, it takes an eter­ni­ty to auto­mat­i­cal­ly load the ency­clo­pe­dia list­ing for it, only to see a ter­ri­ble graph­ic of a gener­ic but­ter­fly with dif­fer­ent col­ors. I soon quit again after real­iz­ing that the game wants you to plant your own for­est in order to col­lect enough wood to make planks to progress fur­ther in the game. I’d already been skip­ping days by sleep­ing so often, that it took any sort of fun away from the game. It has bad flow.

Delv­ing into the past of the game, Robert Tat­nell (accord­ing to Wikipedia), the game’s devel­op­er, orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed the game to be much more like old-school Sim City type of games before mor­ph­ing it into some­thing akin to Ani­mal Cross­ing. Devel­op­ment start­ed in 2017, an ear­ly access released June of 2021 for Steam, and then the full ver­sion released Sep­tem­ber 2022.

Bot­tom Line: So, no, even only 2 hours into the game (I tried to pick it up again today a month after I bought it), I can­not rec­om­mend it unless you’re sim­ply dying for anoth­er game just like Ani­mal Cross­ing or have nev­er played Ani­mal Cross­ing before, or per­haps you have extra time and mon­ey to spare. If I could go back, I would not have bought it.

Game Goods

Cute, Relax­ing: There’s no deny­ing the mind numb­ing sooth­ing qual­i­ty of the game. It’s sim­ple, there are ani­mals, the graph­ics are pleas­ing, there is no killing, maim­ing, guns, or destruc­tion (unless you count felling trees or pluck­ing flow­ers). Sim­i­lar­ly, the music is lulling and not grat­ing. After a long, nasty day at work, this is a great way to just let the mind flow away, con­tent with groom­ing a small town how­ev­er you like.

Detailed: The inte­ri­ors are detailed. You can tell the hard­wood from the wood pan­el walls. There are but­ter­flies, flow­ers to be picked, earth­worms to gath­er. Time and effort cer­tain­ly went into the game.

Famil­iar Game­play: Craft­ing, build­ing, plan­ning, plant­i­ng, chop­ping, dig­ging, fish­ing, buy­ing, col­lect­ing, talk­ing, side quests… This game has every­thing a social sim­u­la­tion game fan wants.

Improve­ments: So far there are some improve­ments to Ani­mal Cross­ing itself, such as small­er grids dur­ing house dec­o­rat­ing allow­ing for fin­er fur­ni­ture place­ment

Game Gripes

Load­ing: I don’t know about oth­er game plat­forms, but the Switch’s game load­ing screen is painful. I actu­al­ly timed it. The main load­ing screen takes an abysmal 1 minute and 13 sec­onds to fin­ish, and then anoth­er 8 sec­onds to final­ly make it to the menu screen. I prob­a­bly could floss my whole mouth in that same time. Then, the auto­mat­ic load­ing screen for new­ly cap­tured bugs is also inter­rupt­ing­ly long.

Char­ac­ter Design: The graph­ics as a whole are pleas­ant. The ani­mal inhab­i­tants are cute (there’s an inex­plic­a­ble dis­dain that I have for them, though… Maybe it’s the copy­cat thing). The char­ac­ter you play, how­ev­er, is, well, ugly, imo. Some­thing about the eyes, maybe? The col­or? There isn’t much cus­tomiza­tion avail­able at all. And I have to look at them the whole time. Ugh.

Small Things: You can’t run, there’s only 1 speed. There’s no quick way to put away the tools. The game isn’t clear about whether or when it autosaves, and there’s no set Save but­ton. It’s hard to tell which house is whose… Espe­cial­ly mine which is the only one with a mail­box. The cur­sor speed for redec­o­rat­ing or plac­ing features/furniture is too fast, mak­ing it hard­er than nec­es­sary to accu­rate­ly posi­tion items. Lack of refine­ment in areas. For exam­ple: I was chas­ing a but­ter­fly and could­n’t catch it because it flew through a build­ing.

Unal­lur­ing: As I men­tioned in the review sec­tion above, I found it extreme­ly dull. I would not have bought the game if I thought I’d be wast­ing my time. It had already looked like an Ani­mal Cross­ing knock­off, and I still bought it with high hopes. Despite the decent graph­ics, some­thing about the game is sim­ply unap­peal­ing. My brain shuts off com­plete­ly. Like, go-to-sleep shut­off. It extends beyond bor­ing to an irra­tional loathing for a rea­son I can’t seem to com­pre­hend. I don’t care what the char­ac­ters are say­ing (and I total­ly under­stand how long it took some­one to come up with and write the dia­logue!) and I don’t care about them or the main char­ac­ter, at all.

Game Pro­gres­sion: The flow of the game is not smooth. Some parts work fine, but oth­ers are sim­ply too slow and mun­dane. Oth­ers feel forced. Most­ly, it was slow. Each piece of equip­ment takes too long to be unlocked. I see fish that beg to be caught, but I don’t even have a shov­el yet, kind of deal. It takes days before the next piece of equip­ment or new craft­ing recipe becomes avail­able.

Conclusion

Not gonna beat a dead horse here: I don’t like this game, and I don’t rec­om­mend it. I will, how­ev­er, because I paid for it, and also for the sake of the person(s) who like­ly poured their heart and soul into it, TRY to progress fur­ther. I will update if my thoughts change.