Hokko Life review - Animal Crossing's rookie pupil

Hokko Life is finally out for consoles and PC after being in early access for about a year. Players picking it up will experience a multi-platform Animal Crossing-like adventure. The latest game from Wonderscope and publisher Team17 borrows more than a few things from Nintendo's acclaimed life-sim franchise.

Welcome and enjoy your stay in Hokko

Create your cute villager (Screenshot via Hokko Life)

If there's anything about Hokko Life that will grab players from the get-go, it's a cutesy aesthetic. Players will begin by customizing their player character in a relatively limited character creator. There are options for hairstyles, skin tone, eye color, etc. Once that is done, players will arrive in the quiet village of Hokko.

Upon arrival at the train station, players will slowly be introduced to a bunch of anthropomorphic characters. These include the innkeeper, a pink elephant called Oma, and a giraffe named Moss, the furniture shopkeeper.

Eventually, the player is tasked with turning this off-the-grid village into a thriving town that attracts new settlers. This can be achieved by building houses and availing of other settlement-flourishing facilities, like a workshop.

Like Animal Crossing, the core gameplay of Hokko Life requires players to spend time as they please. Various activities that can be engaged in include planting crops and trees, bug-catching, mining, fishing, and even tournaments.

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For those who prefer to stay indoors, there is interior decoration, too, thanks to hundreds of items to buy and create. Certain progression metrics must be met first to unlock more features and activities. This is crucial since new upgrades, and entire abilities can be locked behind the in-game progression system known as Mayor Merits.

Day and night

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Unlike Animal Crossing, Hokko Life relies on an in-game clock for its world cycle. During the day, NPCs can be seen bustling while the town's shops close at night. Players can sleep in a bed to pass time, which is a good idea to progress certain elements like tree growth or constructing a new house. There are also seasons where players will encounter rain and snowfall.

However, a lot of time will be spent running about catching butterflies, doing errands for the townsfolk, and so on. Items obtained can be sold to Moss for money, which is crucial when purchasing crafting items, cosmetics, and building houses for newcomers.

Most consumable items will pertain to crafting, like glue, fabric, wood, etc., and players will acquire various crafting recipes to create higher-grade items like steel bars or even entire bridges.

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Cosmetics include headwear, facewear, torso, legs, and feet. A decent variety of clothing items is available every few days once the associated store has opened up in Hokko. Then there is the renovation facility run by Rosa the pig, who will allow players to bring in resources to create homes to house more NPCs.

On that note, players can place new items and relocate existing ones almost anywhere on the map. This will be explained to players as they must create a bridge and place it to connect two areas of the town separated by a river. They will gain the ability to move house locations later on. This late introduction is true of many of the exciting mechanics in Hokko Life, including furniture and fashionwear creation.

Your imagination is the limit

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Players have the complete freedom to customize new and even existing designs as they see fit via an in-game design editor. It is a pretty complex system that relies on blueprints and design parts to create entirely new items and structures - and explaining this could take up a whole article in itself. But to keep it brief, there is enough flexibility here that many players have managed to create jaw-dropping designs that need to be seen to be believed.

The small city area has some neat sights to see (Screenshot via Hokko Life)

Eventually, the city will be unlocked for a visit, and the key attraction here is the Community Store. Browse the catalog for items and download them for use in your save. Each player has their own. Additionally, other shops in the city have seasonal goodies on sale that cannot be found in the town. There are several Halloween-based items on sale since it is a spooky season. This is a good move to ensure longevity for the game.

Overall, the chill vibe and fantastic building system are commendable, but that can only carry the game so far.

Something feels off...

The denizens of Hokko will often need a helping hand (Screenshot via Hokko Life)

While charming at first, it is eery how friendly everyone is right off the bat to a stranger visiting their humble village. A show of hospitality, perhaps? The rest of the NPCs feel similarly shallow as they nod to the protagonist's every whim and vice versa. The dialog doesn't feel particularly engaging, as it feels out of a kid's show - without any substance.

The same can be said for the personality of each NPC, as they never seem to show any emotion besides goody-two-shoes happiness - no sulking or broody town members, for example. This makes engaging with them feel dull outside of requests. The town's denizens are the stars of any good life sim, and Hokko Life drops the ball in that regard.

There is a lot to grind for in the Mayor Merits menu section (Screenshot via Hokko Life)

On that note, progression as a whole feels haphazard. For one, many key items (like the shovel or bug net) will be tied to certain NPCs, so players will have to spend time chasing down every unlocked character in case they do have something important to give or say.

Mayor Merits also feel poorly throughout. These are an interconnected series of rewards handed out for performing certain actions a set number of times (like x number of trees planted or treasures fished out). Unfortunately, some reward silhouettes can be very obscure to figure out. On top of that, certain requirements to unlock them may not be within the players' reach at that point - or be pretty grindy in general.

For example, a map in the game is locked under Mayor Merits, and so is the ability to sprint. These are the bare basics that should be available from the start. The relatively small variety of things to do every day also makes daily routines feel dull. The city offers seasonal rewards to take home, but the town does not reflect this, nor any festivals or occasions unless the player bears the burden of creating this faux heaven for their pleasure.

Graphics, sound, and performance

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The visuals are cel-shaded and simple but decent, although the static expressions on NPCs may creep some players out. The music is fairly laid-back, but there’s nothing worth writing home about. It gets the job done even though it is repetitive. Ambient sounds, however, are well-done, like the sound effects for felling trees or ocean waves on the beach.

Hokko Life is built on the Unity engine, and for PC players, it offers a decent variety of settings to tinker around with. The game has no issues running at 1080p 60 FPS at High settings, though I did notice random hitches, like when opening a menu or interacting with something. On the technical side of things, there are some glitches regarding menu navigation and decorative items clipping through walls when placed.

In conclusion

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Hokko Life has most of the hallmarks of a competent life sim. There are various activities to do, and players can pursue goals at their own pace. While the game understands what makes the genre appealing, it makes odd design choices that do not pay off in the long run.

Odd choices risk turning the player off due to repetitive or unrewarding gameplay. The result is a title that, while undeniably enjoyable, can often have moments that break the immersion, thus creating an irksome clash.

For those looking to scratch that Animal Crossing, Hokko Life will most certainly fall short due to its glaring progression and other design flaws. But it might be worth a pickup for those willing to stick to their guns and intent on making the most out of everything. This is particularly good if you're excited about designing and are looking for a casual pick-up-and-play session.