Hoa (Switch eShop) Review | Nintendo Life

For those of us who played Super Mario Bros. as kids, our jaws dropped the first time someone pointed out that World 1-1 taught you how to play. The Goomba arrives and makes you jump; you are likely to hit your head and discover a fungus; the pipe helps you jump on the blocks and so on. Who would have thought there was a method for designing games? Some generations of designers in the future and all modern platform games know the playbook.

So I would expect Hoa to stick to the conventions. He would wait for a cliff on his way for a short jumping lesson. Hopefully a smooth first section will grant a new ability, probably a double jump or a ground hit. You would expect that whatever the MacGuffin is “in another castle”. That’s what you would do suppose Hoa to do.

And that’s 100% what hoa does it do, exactly, to the letter and without deviations, during almost the entire game. Jumping feels good and the tagged skills are enjoyable enough to use just for fun. Lives and reboots are absent for stress-free exploration. Here I have no complaints, but no surprises either. Only the final level all of a sudden mixes things up and makes you think. However, if Skrollcat Studio has lost points for inventiveness, it has picked them up for style. Calling Hoa “handsome” is an understatement. Book a dental appointment for your peepers because this visual appeal is blindingly sweet.

Sometimes Hoa hardly seems like a game. Extend expectations of how sumptuously a hand-painted look can be realized. Some segments expand to create claustrophobic tension; others are spacious, leaving your character tiny, wrapped in the grandeur of the landscape. His sheet music for soft, singing piano and spring orchestra rises to the same level of craftsmanship and technical fidelity.

Both the graphics and the music are heavily influenced by Studio Ghibli movies, sometimes very strong influence. It’s particularly cheeky that the game opens with a motif straight out of Made disappear. It’s a heartfelt, if straightforward, tribute and Ghibli fans will find inspiration in Totoro, Laputa and more. However, the ideas built on those loans are emotional and delightfully realized. The central narrative theme of the game is also the classic Miyazaki: nature as opposed to technology. Your protagonist fairy traverses organic environments, befriends insects, and slowly reveals a story of how they came to be where they are, but ideas become more established than explored.

Young players who are still green from simple story ideas and platforming fundamentals will find absolute magic in Hoa. Orchestral score and hand-painted backgrounds have the power to make imagination disappear like nothing else. The tried-and-true design of a modern platformer, while not surprising to seasoned gamers, will delight budding gamers familiar with the genre. Aside from its final stage, Hoa is a paint-by-numbers platformer, and the painting is exceptional, even if everything is carefully kept within the lines.