PS3

Hohokum

MusicAdventureIndie

Space needed: About 2.5 GB
Plays offline: Yes

Overview

Hohokum is a 2014 art video game developed by Honeyslug and published by Sony Computer Entertainment for PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, and PlayStation Vita, and by Annapurna Interactive for Microsoft Windows. The player controls a snake-like creature to explore 17 whimsical worlds with no set objectives. The developers, who began development in 2008, compared the concept to flying a kite and were inspired by free London museums, Portmeirion, and indigenous cultures. It was released on August 12, 2014, and features a soundtrack by Ghostly International artists. The game received "generally favorable reviews", as reported by video game review score aggregator Metacritic.

The player-character is a multicolored serpent creature called the "Long Mover" who glides through whimsical game worlds with loose objectives. There is no correct way to play the game, which was designed to be enjoyed without necessarily pursuing objectives. It is non-linear and has no score, time limit, or tutorial. The developer described the game as about "relaxing in a space and just enjoying the experience and the music, instead of trying to complete it to make progress", and an IGN preview said it is "simply about the beauty of exploring". USgamer's Jeremy Parish wrote that the game's challenges were in distinguishing the interactive objects from the environment and then figuring out the function of those interactive objects.

Hohokum is an art game developed by British game developer Honeyslug in collaboration with artist Richard Hogg and Santa Monica Studio beginning in 2008. Hogg and Honeyslug's Ricky Haggett knew each other through a music connection. The two discussed making a game and began to collaborate when Hogg sent images to Haggett, who was experimenting with Adobe Flash. They prototyped a top-down game similar to Flow as well as a platformer with a jetpack, and a mini-golf game. Their first formal collaboration was an entry for Kokoromi's Gamma event in Montreal.

Destructoid's Jordan Devore called Hohokum the "most relaxing game" of E3 2013, and one of his favorites of the show. Polygon selected the game as an E3 2013 Editor's Choice. Jeremy Parish of USgamer thought the game was the most intriguing PlayStation 4 title at the 2013 Tokyo Game Show and praised Sony for highlighting the "decidedly arty" game alongside the console's blockbuster launch titles. He compared the game to a low-stress puzzle in the same design vein of Flower and PixelJunk. Kotaku called the game both the "most confusing game" at E3 2013 and "the weirdest" on the PlayStation 4.