Life simulation game Hokko Life, from developer Wonderscope, is all about building a small town from the ground up, but sadly all the elements outside of building leave something to be desired. Hokko Life takes strong inspiration from games like Animal Crossing: New Horizons, but lacks much of the charm and depth that has made the game so popular. While players who want to solely focus on building customizable furniture will probably be able to get some enjoyment out of the game, that's largely where the game's fun ends.
Hokko Life begins with a small handful of character customization options - players can choose their hairstyle and adjust things like eye color and skin tone, but unfortunately can't make any changes otherwise when it comes to their face. From there, players will wake up in the town of Hokko after oversleeping on the train and decide to start a life there, staying at the inn until they can collect enough materials to repair one of the abandoned houses in town. This eases players into one of the core loops of the game - after their own home is built, much like Animal Crossing, players can move in residents by building homes for them, slowly expanding their town's population.
Sadly, the animal villager designs of Hokko Life leave something to be desired. The designs of each character are both repetitive and unsettling - players will often find a villager who looks exactly as another one does save the simple addition of something like a mustache, and the designs themselves often come off as more creepy than cute. The personalities of each animal are not much better, with a large amount of repetitive dialogue that players will encounter over time. All of this is quite disappointing due to how much the game revolves around these creatures, and makes it hard to find motivation to move in new residents.
In another page from the Animal Crossing playbook, villager home redesign is possible after they've moved in. Besides the villagers players begin Hokko Life with, homes will begin with only a few items, and an interesting mechanic of Hokko Life makes the furniture layout immediately customizable. With such a focus on design, the lack of an interior decorating mode is noticeable; players must approach each furniture item and move it individually, which makes attempting to give a home with a lot of furniture a makeover an absolute chore.
Individual furniture design is where Hokko Life truly shines, giving players control over different blueprints. Although crafting in the game can get somewhat grindy, necessitating players craft things like their own paint and slowly pay to unlock new design pieces from the town crafter, over time players will amass a large library of possibilities, and the game allows for batch crafting. Each blueprint will have certain requirements like size limitations, but otherwise players have free rein to combine different shapes and colors for both home and town decor, including some fun seasonal items. Players can eventually customize clothing as well, although the system is not as robust.
Unfortunately, the other simulation elements of Hokko Life do not contain nearly as much depth as its crafting system does. Both farming and bug catching provide little incentive or sense of achievement, and while progressing in the mines provides some feeling of accomplishment, the tedious way the players must place lights every few feet to move around diminishes this. Players can theoretically fish in Hokko Life as well, however a bug in this particular build meant the event that gives players a fishing rod never triggered.
It's very easy to run out of things to do in a day in Hokko Life early in the day, as it uses a strange time keeping system that's in between Animal Crossing's real-time system and Stardew Valley's fast-paced days. This makes days feel far too long and repetitive with no worthwhile activities to fill them, and players will often find themselves turning in early out of boredom. This is compounded by the fact Hokko Life contains no real holidays or even changes in its simplistic soundtrack to diversify gameplay in any way.
If players are looking for a sandbox game where they plan to solely focus on building, Hokko Life may be the answer. The customizable crafting elements of the game are strong, and players can even share their designs with other players online in the game's city center. However, if players are looking for a new life simulation experience, Hokko Life will likely not provide the depth or addicting fun they're looking for.
Hokko Life releases September 27 for Xbox One, PS4, Nintendo Switch, and PC via Steam. Screen Rant was provided with an Xbox code for the purpose of this review.