Hokko Life is a new life simulator that’s looking to take the crown currently worn by Animal Crossing: New Horizons. It’s a title in which you end up in a village with anthropomorphic animals, and they all have very real jobs and roles in the local community. Since you’re trapped there because the train barely runs, you’re forced into working to improve the village and ultimately bring it up to the level it once was, before everyone stopped caring about it. This is the entire story in the game, but it’s more there just to give you an excuse to keep playing, much like that of every Animal Crossing game. Right now, the game is in early access, with a long road of ongoing development ahead. But is it worth your time?
Hokko Life is a game that could go one of two ways. Right now it has a lot of bugs and lacks in features. However, it’s early access, and the developers are definitely bringing all the major Animal Crossing features to it over the course of this early access run. It’s cheaper to buy as a result at the moment, and for me, that makes it worth the investment. There’s enough of a game there to justify your purchase, but the promise of the end product is what you’re really buying. After all the updates are done, this will be a game that’s worth double what you’ll pay for it now, and that alone is a good reason to buy.
If you’re into the idea of rebuilding a town and making things look pretty like you do in the Animal Crossing franchise, then you’ll love this game. Just don’t expect it to be polished or as packed with content as any of those games right now. Eventually, there will be multiplayer, a full cave system to explore and fight through, and all kinds of other nonsense that will fill out your time with it. Honestly, the plan seems to be to take Animal Crossing and beat it on every single level. As I said, right now you’re just investing in it though. It’ll take a while for this game to be fully realised, but I’m sure it’ll be fantastic once it hits release version 1.0.