Hokko Life (PC) Early Access Preview

As a lot of you may know by the volume of Animal Crossing, Story of Seasons, and Harvest Moon-esque articles on this site, we’re big fans of life sims. I’m always on the lookout for something new and chill to play. Indie takes on this usually really excite me, and Hokko Life is no different. However, where Hokko Life is different, is that it wears inspiration on its sleeve, from games like Animal Crossing in particular.

It is rare to see a game attempt to mimic Animal Crossing, but from the very first moment you arrive in your new home, the inspiration is obvious. You play a character, of your own naming, who fell asleep on a train and accidentally arrived in the town of Hokko.

Hokko doesn’t often get train traffic, so you won’t be able to return home. The villagers rally around you, in the hopes that you can help them rebuild the once-prosperous town and make it successful again. I should also mention that if you didn’t already notice this by the title, Hokko Life is in Early Access. I would argue that it is very early in that Early Access period as well, so expect it to be rough around the edges.

Most of your first few hours in Hokko Life are spent undergoing small quests for the three main townsfolk that actually run the town. Oma is the owner of the restaurant and lets you live there for free until you can get a house of your own. Moss owns the general store and sometimes helps you by giving you guidance and materials you can’t get quite yet.

Sally owns the Workshop and teaches you how to craft and design. The design mechanic is awkward with a controller, but I think with a mouse and keyboard it might be a little easier. Regardless, there are a lot of ways to customize and design things to your specifications. Additionally, you can decorate the town in all sorts of ways, particularly in whatever way your heart desires. You can get patterns, material types, fabrics, etc, and customize them with all manner of colors and styles.

To craft, you’ll need materials. To get those materials you’ll need tools such as the axe, pickaxe, net, fishing rod, and more. It takes some time to get all these tools since the options for making money are initially limited. You start out with the axe and can go from there to get the other tools. There is mining, fishing, planting of flowers, and more (coming in July) as well as bugs to catch and items to craft and decorate.

Honestly, there is a very clear vision here for what Hokko Life could shape up to be. However, I would argue that the opening few hours are a little aimless. Without some of the tools at your disposal, you’ll get to a point where you have to skip several days by sleeping in order to get trees or flowers to grow so that you can finish quests.

The villagers aren’t all that interesting either, though I hope that is something that can be fixed in later updates. This is a very early version of the game, so there is plenty of room for improvement and a lot of ways to expand the Hokko Life experience. There are also some bugs to deal with as well, though I’ve noticed that Hokko Life’s update schedule is pretty frequent.

However, there are some things in Hokko Life that New Horizons lacks. You can turn the furniture on a diagonal, as well as picking up and moving buildings almost effortlessly. The building mechanic also lets you make all kinds of things, expressing yourself creatively.

I personally find this to be an impressive first look, considering the game is currently being developed by a single man. Hokko Life may not be perfect, and there may be a lot of things that need to be fixed or altered, but it has a lot of charm.

An Early Access PC Key for Hokko Life was provided by Team17 for this preview.