Sights & Sounds
- Hoa's most distinguishing positive quality is the beauty of its artwork. Whether you're racing through a sunny flowered field, drifting among the ocean's depths with jellyfish, or winding through the smoking machinery of a clanging factory, you'll be delighted by the amount of detail poured into the watercolored backdrops. This is clearly a Ghibli-inspired game, and Hoa pulls off the look very well
- I was curious about the name, but apparently "Hoa" is an anglicized form of the Vietnamese word for "flowers". As you might expect if you've looked at the screenshots, they factor quite prominently into the game's visuals
- I'm particularly pleased by the lack of an interface. There's no health bar, powerups, mission markers, or other sundries making your screen untidy. You get full, unadulterated, and unobscured views of the game's art at all times, which I really appreciated
- This will likely sound reductive, but until I play a game like this that thwarts my expectations, I'll cling to believing this stereotype: You can look at any artsy platformer and immediately guess what it's soundtrack will be. Piano, strings and woodwinds. Mostly playful and light in the early going, perhaps even a waltz. Towards the middle, it becomes more mysterious and austere, probably implying the existance of a water or ice level. It then proceeds to a darker tone as the game hits the culmination of its central conflict and the composer throws a little synth in there or maybe even an effect on the piano or strings if they're feeling frisky. We then return to a variation of the game's opening theme
- This isn't to imply that the music in this game is bad. It's not. I liked it! But there's so much opportunity for a composer to do something unique in a game like this, yet it sounds like just another game with an airy classical backdrop that borrows too many notes from Vivaldi
Story & Vibes
- The story for this one is a little strange. Not because the plot is weird or hard to understand, mind you. It's only because the entirety of the narrative is backstory explaining what happened to the main character as a baby with only a minimal connection to the events of the game.
- The backstory, I've learned, is a bit inspired by Vietnamese folklore. Although the plot can be summarized in a sentence or two (an exercise I'll forgo to avoid spoilers), it's nice to get a small glimpse into another culture's mythology
- Vibewise, this is as peaceful as a game can be. With all the pretty art, upbeat classical music, and complete void of difficulty or danger, you'll be up to your neck in the warm fuzzies. Well, most of the time. Hoa is not a frustration-free experience
Playability & Replayability
- Oh dear. Here's where things start to fall apart
- Having played more puzzle platformers than anyone really ought to, I'm disappointed to report that the platforming controls in Hoa felt particularly grim
- Normally, receiving a double jump in a game is a nice upgrade that allows you to access new areas and generally move around the world a little more easily. Unfortunately, Hoa features the most annoying implementation of this feature that has ever been committed to code. I don't know why, but changing direction while double jumping seems to work only 50% of the time you try to do it. If there's a window for it, I wasn't able to figure it out in the game's brief runtime. It felt unresponsive and iffy throughout the entire game
- The jump wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the swinging vine segments. For reasons I don't completely understand, the physics for these require an inordinate amount of precision. You need to build just the right amount of momentum, jump at exactly the right moment, and grab the exact part of the next vine the game wants you to grab, or else you'll fall and have to start all over. You can't rely on your double-jump to save you on these either due to the iffy momentum; most times you try, you'll just sail off in the opposite direction like an idiot
- The puzzles as a whole are barebones. Really, they're more like slight obstructions like getting a beetle to follow you so you can make a jump or working your way through a spiderweb maze. Your brain won't be taxed, but your patience might
- Even when the game tries to mix up its formula in the last chapter, it falls flat on its face. The shift in artstyle, perspective, and controls is really cool and effective visually, but it just compounds the issues with the platforming. Those really frustrating vine jumps? Those sucked, so now try doing them upside-down and with reversed controls. The worst part of my experience was that after struggling through the artificially-inflated difficulty of this section and making it to the final cutscene, the game just shat itself and crashed. And where was my autosave? That's right. At the very beginning of the level
Overall Impressions & Performance
- The duality of this game is hard to square. On one hand, it's beautiful and calming in its best moments, but a complete mess at its worst. The awkward jumping physics and the presence of game-crashing bugs really put a damper on what could--or should--have been a much better experience
- I'm unsure if my crash had to do with the fact that I was playing on the Steam Deck, but that little green "verified" checkmark made me feel confident that I wouldn't run into any major problems. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case
Final Verdict
5.5/10. Just like my dad used to say, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. It's worth trying for the art if you really like what you see in the screenshots, but maybe temper your expectations of the gameplay
Psst, hey. You like games? You like free games? Check this out
- Hoa's most distinguishing positive quality is the beauty of its artwork. Whether you're racing through a sunny flowered field, drifting among the ocean's depths with jellyfish, or winding through the smoking machinery of a clanging factory, you'll be delighted by the amount of detail poured into the watercolored backdrops. This is clearly a Ghibli-inspired game, and Hoa pulls off the look very well
- I was curious about the name, but apparently "Hoa" is an anglicized form of the Vietnamese word for "flowers". As you might expect if you've looked at the screenshots, they factor quite prominently into the game's visuals
- I'm particularly pleased by the lack of an interface. There's no health bar, powerups, mission markers, or other sundries making your screen untidy. You get full, unadulterated, and unobscured views of the game's art at all times, which I really appreciated
- This will likely sound reductive, but until I play a game like this that thwarts my expectations, I'll cling to believing this stereotype: You can look at any artsy platformer and immediately guess what it's soundtrack will be. Piano, strings and woodwinds. Mostly playful and light in the early going, perhaps even a waltz. Towards the middle, it becomes more mysterious and austere, probably implying the existance of a water or ice level. It then proceeds to a darker tone as the game hits the culmination of its central conflict and the composer throws a little synth in there or maybe even an effect on the piano or strings if they're feeling frisky. We then return to a variation of the game's opening theme
- This isn't to imply that the music in this game is bad. It's not. I liked it! But there's so much opportunity for a composer to do something unique in a game like this, yet it sounds like just another game with an airy classical backdrop that borrows too many notes from Vivaldi
Story & Vibes
- The story for this one is a little strange. Not because the plot is weird or hard to understand, mind you. It's only because the entirety of the narrative is backstory explaining what happened to the main character as a baby with only a minimal connection to the events of the game.
- The backstory, I've learned, is a bit inspired by Vietnamese folklore. Although the plot can be summarized in a sentence or two (an exercise I'll forgo to avoid spoilers), it's nice to get a small glimpse into another culture's mythology
- Vibewise, this is as peaceful as a game can be. With all the pretty art, upbeat classical music, and complete void of difficulty or danger, you'll be up to your neck in the warm fuzzies. Well, most of the time. Hoa is not a frustration-free experience
Playability & Replayability
- Oh dear. Here's where things start to fall apart
- Having played more puzzle platformers than anyone really ought to, I'm disappointed to report that the platforming controls in Hoa felt particularly grim
- Normally, receiving a double jump in a game is a nice upgrade that allows you to access new areas and generally move around the world a little more easily. Unfortunately, Hoa features the most annoying implementation of this feature that has ever been committed to code. I don't know why, but changing direction while double jumping seems to work only 50% of the time you try to do it. If there's a window for it, I wasn't able to figure it out in the game's brief runtime. It felt unresponsive and iffy throughout the entire game
- The jump wouldn't be so bad if it weren't for the swinging vine segments. For reasons I don't completely understand, the physics for these require an inordinate amount of precision. You need to build just the right amount of momentum, jump at exactly the right moment, and grab the exact part of the next vine the game wants you to grab, or else you'll fall and have to start all over. You can't rely on your double-jump to save you on these either due to the iffy momentum; most times you try, you'll just sail off in the opposite direction like an idiot
- The puzzles as a whole are barebones. Really, they're more like slight obstructions like getting a beetle to follow you so you can make a jump or working your way through a spiderweb maze. Your brain won't be taxed, but your patience might
- Even when the game tries to mix up its formula in the last chapter, it falls flat on its face. The shift in artstyle, perspective, and controls is really cool and effective visually, but it just compounds the issues with the platforming. Those really frustrating vine jumps? Those sucked, so now try doing them upside-down and with reversed controls. The worst part of my experience was that after struggling through the artificially-inflated difficulty of this section and making it to the final cutscene, the game just shat itself and crashed. And where was my autosave? That's right. At the very beginning of the level
Overall Impressions & Performance
- The duality of this game is hard to square. On one hand, it's beautiful and calming in its best moments, but a complete mess at its worst. The awkward jumping physics and the presence of game-crashing bugs really put a damper on what could--or should--have been a much better experience
- I'm unsure if my crash had to do with the fact that I was playing on the Steam Deck, but that little green "verified" checkmark made me feel confident that I wouldn't run into any major problems. Unfortunately, that wasn't the case
Final Verdict
5.5/10. Just like my dad used to say, I'm not mad, I'm just disappointed. It's worth trying for the art if you really like what you see in the screenshots, but maybe temper your expectations of the gameplay
Psst, hey. You like games? You like free games? Check this out