I am very inspired by games that evoke a strong response in the souls of different people, their impulses for reflection and attempts to rethink their worldview or situation, the main characters with whom they could associate themselves. In some works of the gaming industry, for this purpose, developers invest more in the plot to reflect their experiences and emotions. In others, all these signs are non-verbal, they can be recognized in interactions with the game world and characters, even if they do not utter a word during the entire playthrough, and the plot can be difficult to understand along a straight obvious line.
There is another side to this coin. Sometimes developers, for their own reasons, cover up fat plot holes and outright hackwork with encrypted communication between the player and the game. I’m talking about the fact that players can increasingly come across games with an open narration of the plot, a lack of dialogue and loose action behind which supposedly hides a deep plot and messages from the creators. But because of this, it’s obviously impossible to put all games with this technique under the same brush. Everything is learned through comparison and the player’s personal feelings.
Today’s game is not at all guilty of this. It will be an example of both a fairly simple, but at the same time fascinating adventure, and a projection of individual players’ own thoughts and experiences.
In this regard, I was inspired by an article from DTF for this user game Rant (https://dtf.ru/games/1916022-hob-melanholichnoe-priklyuchenie-navstrechu-samomu-sebe). He very sincerely and vividly shares his experience of passing, understanding the plot and applying some thoughts to his life situations. Even though these are just personal notes, they attracted me and made me see how strongly this or that game can resonate and be transported as if from the monitor screen into real life.
For me personally, the game did not evoke such vivid emotions, but it became a most pleasant journey through a colorful world of riddles, battles and difficult moral choices.
"Hob" – a three-dimensional game in the genre action-adventure, released September 26, 2017 from the pen of the studio Runic Games, who acted as developers and publishers. In addition to being released on PC, it was also ported to PlayStation 4 And Nintendo Switch. Also, the first games of the studio, from which some features and game mechanics were adopted into the new brainchild, were two parts Torchlight steampunk style. And in turn, people involved in the creation of a series of games worked on them Diablo. And so, along the chain, elements of metroidvania and role-playing games were drawn into the latest creation of Runic Games.
Torchlight
It is also noteworthy that http://casino-mrq.co.uk/ on the official website of the development team there is a colorful and cute comic created by Christina Ness. Five pages of the comic are the prelude and beginning of the game’s story, showing the main characters and a piece of the world that the player will have to explore and save. The last page marks the very beginning of this adventure.
Among other interesting things on the site there is a video with a recording of the composer of the soundtrack for Hob, as well as collections of musical accompaniment for their other games.
Despite the good and very smooth combat system, Hob is more about puzzles, riddles and world exploration. In many aspects of plot construction and game mechanics, it is very similar to the previous game I reviewed – Hyper Light Drifter. It’s hard to believe that the creators weren’t at least a little inspired by this work. I will refer to it throughout the review; it was interesting for me to notice the differences in different aspects of these games.
And now to the plot and lore.
Game structure and plot
The story begins with the liberation of a small creature with a red cloak and big blue eyes. After a long sleep, he finally wakes up and leaves the stone room into the bright sunlight and tall lush grass. A large friendly robot stands next to the awakened one – it was he who set us free. With silent nods and gestures, the big man beckons the hero closer, and now control passes into the hands of the player. From now on, he can go absolutely wherever he wants, because the direction of movement here is just as meaningless as in Hyper Light Drifter. And here, too, the game’s narrative moves without words or full-fledged dialogues. I thought Hob did a better job of visually telling its story through vibrant environments and specific events.
Having wandered quite a bit through pleasant and colorful places, the player soon understands the main problem and the goal arising from it. Among harmless strange animals, tall trees and majestic rocks, clumps of an incomprehensible dense substance are imposingly located. Their color is unpleasant, dirty purple, and the consistency itself seems to be alive – it breathes and pulsates, entwining trees and stones. Of course, this substance spoils beautiful views to a large extent. But besides this, it is also aggressive: it immediately attacks our hero as soon as he gets close. Holding the hand of the “red cloak” tightly, it has already begun to infect living flesh. Fortunately, a big iron man we know comes to the rescue and cuts off the hand, which can no longer be saved, and the infection would spread further throughout the body.
A little later we see the main character, who again awakens from fainting, and instead of an infected hand, he now has a large robot palm. A generous act that will now help us fight hostile creatures more effectively. The player, although without words, clearly understands his goal – to rid this planet of an unknown disease in the form of mucus and green up the dead, already poisoned areas.
The beginning is similar to Hyper Light Drifter, isn’t it?? Both have a very similar concept, narrative method, and player motivation. Also a relatively open world that you can explore as much as you like, and entertaining battles with very strong enemy units. This is all true, but Hob seemed to me more sensual and emotional, or something. And not only due to the less gloomy environment, but due to more involved interaction with the player. He doesn’t just decipher frescoes on his own and tries to get into rooms with secrets. Hob shows more visually where to go and where else something is.
But, of course, there will be moments where you can get stuck for a long time, because the game has a lot of puzzles and terrain games. You will fall to the lower floors, look for underground passages, try to climb to the highest point, raise entire hidden levels underground and much more. The map is also not the most understandable thing in this game. It shows the main places that still need to be reached, and in addition to this you need to look for hidden nooks with local currency for leveling up your character, as well as additional lives.
Then the player develops according to a completely standard plot. Explores the world, finds secrets, destroying the slime along the way and returning life to 7 regions, different in their design and degree of contamination of the territory. And so we get closer and closer to the main source of infection – a tower hovering above the earth, in which the savior in a cloak will not only find out the reason for the capture of this planet, but will also make a difficult decision.
Depending on the choice there will be a different ending. There are two of them in the game, but they can be interpreted in different ways. My story is not even the tip of the iceberg, it is just the peak. You still need to try to understand the game itself, since the history of the infected world is much deeper and more ambiguous, and also contains great moral potential. If you are not afraid of spoilers and want to better understand the lore of Hob, I advise you to watch a video on the game from the channel Likoris on YouTube:
There, the author examines in detail and interestingly the small details of the plot and gives his interpretations of the endings. It was just very interesting for me to understand the plot, because during the passage many small conventions eluded my eyes. Well, it’s also useful to listen to an opinion different from your own.
Gameplay
The combat in this game, unlike Hyper Light Drifter, is less intense, but still requires the player to be careful and choose tactics for each type of enemy. After all, as they progress across the poisoned planet, they take on a more satisfying appearance and improvements in the form of armor. However, you don’t even have to get into many fights, you can simply cleverly bypass them and go your own way. Monsters will sooner or later lose interest and will not continue the chase.
Hob places more value on the player’s ingenuity and patience to understand how a particular mechanism works and find the next correct path. The controls themselves are very smooth and pleasant, especially if you play with a gamepad. There are also moments of peace here. So, when the player climbs to the next hill, he can dangle his legs and sit on the edge of a ledge or lean his shoulder against a stone wall to collect his thoughts for a minute and admire the truly beautiful and mesmerizing views. And there is a lot to see here.