“Mom, can I play Animal Crossing?” “No, I have Animal Crossing at home.” This meme ran through my head while playing Hokko Life.
I’m not against games inspired by other games. For example, Stardew Valley was inspired by the Harvest Moon/Story of Seasons series. However, despite drawing inspiration from existing properties, Stardew Valley has created its own identity by improving on some aspects of the original inspiration. I don’t think the same can be said for Hokko Life.
Like Animal Crossing, you are one human in a town of anthropomorphic animals tasked with repairing and giving them new life. It looks like animoji or animatronic animals. Nor is it much in terms of charm or interesting personality. You progress slowly as you perform tasks such as chopping trees and giving items to people. Sometimes it can be difficult to decide what to do to advance the main story. So I just talked to people and did chores until something interesting happened.
One of the big attractions of Hokko Life is crafts. To make furniture for others or for yourself, you need to chop wood into lumber. Assembly is very slow, slow to control and almost unbearable. Furniture can be painted and placed in houses and animal villagers. You’ll also find that you’ll need to plant a lot of trees in order to cut down enough to advance the story.
Other activities you can do are catching, fishing and farming. Farming is a mid-game feature so I wasn’t able to try it, but I did try the other two. Catching bugs is the first thing you unlock. Press the A button to catch bugs, but the character swings the net left and right, so it takes a little getting used to, and fishing is one of the most interesting features for me. Not only do you have to wait for the shadow of the fish to bite into your line, but you also play a small mini-game once you’ve fished. You have to move the analog stick up, down, left and right as instructed, but you have to be careful not to push too much and raise the tension and break the line.
Overall, Hokko Life is a bland shell that makes you want to ride the coattails of Animal Crossing without doing anything to stand out or be unique. It makes some weird choices, but it’s not maddeningly terrible. The visuals aren’t bad, but the music is forgettable. For an average game at best, the $19.99 launch price means it’s not much to recommend.
