Indie Hohokum

[HandsomeDead]

Hohokum is one of those video games that gets caught up in the debate of 'oh, but is it a video game' and I really hate that debate... well, I don't hate it, I just don't think it matters. Is it a virtual thing you interact and have fun/dramatic/entetrtaining times with? well, sir/madam, that is a video game.

So with that sorted, let me tell you a bit about Hohokum.

In Hohokum you are a one eyed snake (lol) and you whizz around this strange world full of colourful characters living their wee lives and you have to help them out. The reason you gotta help them out is because other one eyed snakes are trapped and you have to rescue them, and they're stuck in unexpected places. You have to decipher the world and try and figure out where they are hidden.

It's hard to explain the game without namechecking others so that's what I'm going to do. So think:

Fez

Nobi Nobi Boy

Animal Crossing.

Fez comes to me because becuase it's a game with no hand holding. You're left to go and explore and you have to figure out the problems yourslef. I wouldn't even say the problems are that hard to solve, but when you have a game so full of stuff (cool stuff, mind) it can be hard find them. In fact I found them by stumbling into them, and only in hindsight do I see why.

That takes me to Nobi Nobi Boy. To me, that game was just fun to interact with; it was a game that was fun to see what would happen if you did such and such. A few games do that but it's usually based around violence, but this was cute stuff. Hohokum has that too. As well as that I like how the game feels to play, in the way you move. It has a real nice feeling inertia to it, and I also discovered how to move really quickly in it by fluttering the L and R buttons to snake at high speeds through the level. There is so much nuance to the movement, I love it.

And the reason it makes me think of Animal Crossing is that it just has that simple satisfaction fo doing simple things for people. Get wee man to a certain place and a cool thingy will happen; get wine to the peole and such and such will happen. It's just full of simple rewards for trivial stuff, but it's fun because of just how the game feels to play.

Obviously, it's one of those games that are hard to decribe, but I tried my best here. I think I'd recomend it to anyone who like at least two of the games I'd mentioned.

[AndyKurosaki]

Yeah, it's certainly fun, in a "what the hell am I doing" sense. There's no objectives, no goals, just fly around a bit and see what you can find.