Liverpool Sound and Vision Rating 9/10

Hohokum is an adventure title available for download from the PlayStation Store for the PS4, PS3 and PS Vita. The game is a creative collaboration between the developer Honeyslug and the artist Richard Hogg that seeks to provide a unique experience that is free of any enemies and is purely dedicated to non-linear exploration in a relaxing world.

The world of Hohokum is expressively charming as the player explores the surrounding environments with the soul purpose of making the scenery come to life by simply manoeuvring past it. A simple example of this is a party that does not seem that lively at first with a man standing below a bell tower, but then you discover an entire entourage of guests and a woman standing next to the hosts of the party. As the player moves past the woman; she decides to jump onto the character as though she is lost and in need of direction, which is when you discover the woman is actually wearing a wedding dress and is in desperate need of finding the man she is about to marry. Upon delivering her beneath the bell tower; she skips off into the arms of the man she is about to marry as you ring the bell to declare them as husband and wife. Your next task is to allow the three hosts to ride on your back, so they can give the guests the very best champagne possible to celebrate such an amazing moment, which is fun in itself as it livens the party atmosphere substantially as everyone starts to dance or move in their own gestures of celebration. However, when there is not enough champagne to go around; the only option left is to dunk your creature and the three party hosts into a pool of champagne and hand it out to the remaining guests. You would think that was enough interaction, but it continues further as you get to set fireworks off in the night sky to continue the appropriate romantic mood for the newlywed couple as the couple dance the night away.

The character design is just as charming as the environmental design as you explore the world around you with an individual that can only be described as a kite-like flying creature. As there are no enemies in Hohokum; all of the characters are as delightful as you could ever wish for them to be as everyone has their own animations resulting in little mannerisms or reactions when you pass by them that helps to make everything about the game so fun, unique and entertaining to experience.

The beauty of the gameplay being that it is so relaxing and allows the player to think for themselves in regards to how they want to approach the surrounding environment; therefore they are controlling it, rather than it controlling them, which provides a rewarding feeling when the player has illuminated an entire area and touching everyone in a positive way by performing some kind gesture to make all of the characters feel happy.

Hohokum supports the share feature that allows players to upload a video clip or screen shot to Facebook or Twitter and broadcast live gameplay footage via Twitch or Ustream as they are experiencing the game with a simple tap of the share button and selecting the option of your choice. The PS4’s hard-drive continuously stores the most recent fifteen minutes of gameplay footage, so players still have the chance to decide if they would like to share something amazing a few minutes after it has taken place. The share feature is a next-gen revolution that has only improved with the further customisation provided by the Share Factory app that allows commentary, music, themes, stickers, effects, text, picture-in-picture video between the game footage and the players reaction from the PlayStation Camera and much more besides, which will only continue to prosper and flourish as it matures with additional features and further experimentation in the future.

Hohokum supports cross-buy and cross-save between the PS4, PS3 and Vita. Cross-buy presents a superb amount of value as it means that you will be purchasing the PS4, PS3 and Vita versions of the game with just a single purchase. The cross-save functionality allows you to sync the progression of your save file from your Vita to your PS3 or PS4 and vice versa, so you can start playing the game on your Vita on the way to and from work, sync your save game when you return home and then resume were you left off by loading the save game and continuing via the PS3 or PS4 version. The cross-save feature is made possible by uploading the saved file to the cloud on one console and downloading it from the other.

The controls are rather easy to master and the control scheme consists of pressing O to reduce the speed of the creature; pressing X to inch forward or holding X to increase the speed of the creature; pressing square to make the creature shut their eye; holding R1 or R2 to coil around into a circle in a clockwise direction or holding R1 or R2 while moving the left analogue stick in the direction  want to travel to increase the speed of the creature; holding L1 or L2 to coil around into a circle in an anti-clockwise direction or holding L1 or L2 while moving the left analogue stick in the direction you want to travel to increase the speed of the creature; changing the direction of the left analogue stick to manoeuvre the creature; changing the direction of the right analogue stick to zoom the camera angle further in or out; pressing the share button takes the player to the share feature menu; and pressing the options button to display the pause menu.

The touch pad implementation makes the creature vibrate in a rather peculiar way, which is an effect that is then passed onto any of the guests that are riding on the back of the creature. The light bar implementation is synchronised to the colour of the top of the creature with the light bar colour immediately adjusting as soon as the top of the being changes colour, which covers a great variety of colours and tones including: blue, pink, yellow and white, amongst others. The DualShock 4 controller vibrates whenever the player has touched the surface of an object, such as a ball or a wall, while the same effect will be felt when you descend into a liquid containing a large amount of volume or even as you illuminate anything.

Hohokum has an absolutely beautiful graphical art style that looks inspired by The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film with a phenomenal spectrum of colours making the world feel incredibly vibrant and artistically abstract in its presentation and yet very approachable in regards to how interactive the environments really are, alongside such a unique creature as the lead character and a wide range of background characters.

The presentation of the game is solid with a great user interface that is navigated by the face buttons with support for the left analogue stick and directional pad across various menus such as the main, home, settings and gameplay menus, although there is no support for navigation via the right analogue stick or touch pad. The background of the main menu revolves around the bright and colourful Hohokum logo as trees growing out from the top of the logo with a white background colour, while the pause menu has the same logo, image, background and colours, although there is a variant between a couple of creatures that keep on popping up to provide some comedy.

Hohokum possesses an amazing soundtrack that integrates with the sound effects in perfect harmony as the sound effects provide notes that have a reverberation resembling that of ringing chimes as they slot into in the music, whilst there are other sound effects that tend to be rather surreal, such as a creature that appears on the pause menu speaking an abstract language. There is a great use of the DualShock 4 speaker as it produces chimes whenever the player does something to make the landscape or people livelier.

The trophy list includes twelve trophies with nine bronze trophies, two silver trophies and one gold trophy. The majority of the trophies will be earned naturally as progress is made through the game, such as the Nutpopper’s Regret (Popnutimus Minimus) bronze trophy for equalizing all of the large nuts by bumping into all of the large nuts on a tree in lower part of the Kite Festival level and the Nutpopper’s Delight (Popnutimus Maxia) silver trophy for equalizing all of the popnuts by bumping into all of the large popnuts in the popnut forest on the Orange Nut Forest level. The hardest trophy has to be the Hohoquick (Hohokumnavigus Furius) gold trophy for visiting all of the areas and returning to the home world within one hour, which is quite difficult as there is a lot of ground to cover within the time limit. It should be estimated that depending upon skill, a good trophy guide to provide some helpful tips on all twelve of the trophies as they are all secret awards on the actual list, that it would take between five to ten hours to 100% the trophy list.

There are no difficulty levels, which is rather appropriate as the game is in no need to be hard at any given moment as the experience of Hohokum is all about the exploration of the surrounding environments as you enjoy a game that is pretty much designed to make you feel totally relaxed.

There is no local or online multiplayer and there is also no online leaderboards. The lack of multiplayer is surprising as there could have been split-screen local co-operative multiplayer as both players would have experienced the world together. Whilst there could also have been scope for having an online component, which could potentially be a massive multiplayer online game with players exploring an ever expanding universe of creation or perhaps there could have been multiplayer even in the simplest form as pass the controller co-operative multiplayer for each player to take turns for a particular duration. The lack of online leaderboards is also a surprise as they could have covered the fastest times for completing each level and the overall game.

The replayability of Hohokum purely stems from the amount of independence the player is granted to explore the surrounding environments; as there are no tasks that are forced to being complete and you are always at the permanent leisure of being able to explore wherever you want to whenever you want do so, which really makes for a relaxed feeling throughout the entire game that the player will want to keep on experiencing time after time.

Overall, Hohokum is essentially about having the freedom of exploration throughout a giant playground of fun in an abstract world that is full of thoroughly entertaining, endless possibilities. Hohokum is exceptional value at £9.99 for a triple cross-buy purchase for PS4, PS3 and PS Vita, while being worthy of a recommendation to anyone who appreciates art and certainly to anybody that enjoyed the abstract artwork of The Beatles’ Yellow Submarine video.

Jason Bonnar

Analysis

• Title: Hohokum
• Developer: Honeyslug
• Publisher: Sony Computer Entertainment Europe (SCEE)
• System: PS4
• Format: PSN Download
• Cross-Buy: Yes (PS4, PS3 and PS Vita)
• Cross-Play: Yes (Cross-Save)
• Players: 1
• Hard Drive Space Required: 2.9GB