Hob

Great level design and unique visual style

One of the best games I have played It's very relaxing great story Just a generally fun

This game made me appreciate good level design. After playing similar games like Tunic and Link's Awakening, this one doesn't hit the mark at all. These are the giant cons for me:
- Level design is uninspired at best. Each section of an area is so weirdly repetitive. I could take a random screenshot from the over world and I could not point out that specific location on the map.
- Dungeon puzzling is as straight as it gets. Push this box here, push this button here, pull this lever here. Done.
- Locked camera is okay for the most part, but there are areas where terrain will get in the way and you can't see what you're doing.
- No direction. I get that it wants you to explore, and it does have a marker on the map showing you where you need to get to, but when I have to spend 30 minutes backtracking, looking for paths, and making zero progress towards the marker, I'm out.

I usually never write review before fishing a game. What I played in the short time I love. The art style and design of the world is amazing. and it feels like I found a hidden gem right here.

I planned to play this game on the steam deck. This is important.
The min requirement and proton db said the game should run well, except maybe some rare frame drops to 40 fps.
Sadly I don’t know what happens but the game frequently drops to 20 or 10 fps. The lowest I saw is 5 fps in a random corner of the world lol.

Steam deck confusing performance

But the steam deck gpu and cpu are both less then 50% in use on high settings. It doesn't make any sense, so I gave the deck to my tech savy wife and she changed some settings and experimented around. After a lot of tinkering with the game graphic settings (that are in a separate launcher my I add, not in game settings), steam deck settings and even with decky plugins that add more control we made it more stable. The steamdeck still runs only 50% use, nothing changed there. So why is this game sometimes running like ass? Why do some random corners or areas with nothings special in them drop the fps for 5 seconds to 10 fps? but at least it is better now.
The answer is we still don’t know. The main theory is the game engine “Ogre”, because it is not a game engine it is rendering engine (what is not necessary bad). The studio made all their other games in the engine. Maybe proton just struggles translation the stuff fast enough, I will test the game on windows once I have time and update the review after finishing the game.
But ye not sure why a game that uses only 50% of the steam deck struggles so bad at running it self.

Game is short and sweet, great little adventure

Incricate, detailed, polished, rich, gorgeous and diverse, Hob is an amazing 3D platformer metroidvania! The level design is astounding, the art is a feast for the eyes, this is worth your time if you want top-notch puzzle solving in a melancholy sci-fi setting.

I found it to be an enjoyable little romp, There is no actual dialogue but the story is fairly decent... the final decision is rather confusing to me but overall it was a great time.

Its a good and simple game from 2017. That's all.
And for those who say the games is hard: Git gud

Yeah I didn't like it. It was so boring doing the same sections again. It lacked biomes and variety. The enemys seem overpowered even though you improve your sword. The backtracking it's terrible since rarely adds anything. Also the rooms that have lore and the story, just don't explain anything. The story was told so badly, I couldn't understand anything.

But I gotta say that "Runic Games" really put effort in it, especially in the desing and aesthetics of the world and the hero.

Took me 10 minutes of playing to know that this game was made by competent devs who knew game design well.

- Love the atmosphere and the aesthetics, a very pleasing to look at game, colorful but not toxic bright or too cartoony. All the mechanisms are neatly animated, you press a switch and just look how things click clack and door opens or even a new terrain appears, very satisfying.
- Level design is like "dark souls", everything is interconnected, lots of shortcuts, fun exploration that's worth doing.
- Definitely should be played with controller, movement is nice and responsive, battles are easy, so I'd recommend hard difficulty.
- Keep your eyes peeled, cause I got stuck three times not knowing what to do and 2 of those were cracks in a breakable floor, so don't miss those or you'll be running in circles like I did till I noticed them.
- Game looks family friendly, but then I charged my fist and slammed through a boar in slo-mo in a burst of gory dismemberment, this surprised me so much, that I laughed out loud.

A fantastic indie game from the devs of Torchlight 1 and 2.
RIP Runic Games.

10/10

Very intriguing game. Exploration, platformer, metroidvania, puzzle, beautiful art so basically everything that I like. The only off putting thing for me was how gore it was. It didn't fit for me to this type of graphic. Thankfully you can turn it off in the menu. I love finding hidden paths to get all the items and upgrades! There are 2 endings depending on your final choice in the game

~~Check my curator's page!~~

I liked almost everything about it. Got stuck somewhere once, but managed to press on. The different endings are a neat touch. The characters seem lovely and the mechanical arm & sword really appeal to me.

2 soft locks, but good platformer and puzzle game

Have to say this game that seemed to be an indie one turned out quite AAA. It just took me three or four years or so to complete. At times I got stuck so badly and didnt know where to go. Something you would expect from an early 2000 era game. I remained stubborn until I figured it out myself. So it was not very good to play in a casual style. The game could not keep my attention very well for this reason.

I started playing this with 3DVision on a 3D monitor and really liked it. It worked really well. At the time I was also getting into Virtual Reality and continued it Half Side by Side with Virtual Desktop. The performance was quite bad. Later I managed to get it working through KatangaVR and Geo11. The performance increased drastically and made it much more playable. To me it felt like the game was meant for Virtual Reality! I loved playing the last 7 or 9 hours! Really peaceful, unique and challenging. The files to do this can be found somewhere on HelixMod.

Hob is a great mix-up of both 2D Zelda-style and Metroidvania-style games. The worldbuilding is almost purely visual (dialogue is present, but not in any human language (that I know of)) but there is still a very interesting story with multiple endings. The puzzle-piece like nature of the world of Hob and its mechanics are a lot of fun to discover and play around with, and the music is very atmospheric and chill. Just great vibes overall

This is a great little game. This world is fascinating, gorgeous, alien. To me it's a slightly different take on a classic Metroidvania - it's less about finding abilities that unlock new areas (although there is a bit of that early on), and more about solving puzzles to modify the world.

I generally liked the fighting - it's not too challenging and there is almost no death penalty, but there is some thought and strategy required.

I ended up being quite fond of my character and the robot friend, and a bit sad when I got to the end and there was no more.

Only a few smallish complaints:
* the 'no words' is cute and all, but ended up being inadequate to really work out what the overall context was and I had to go online to find an explanation.

* I would have killed for the ability to place custom markers on the map so that I could record things I felt I hadn't completely explored and should come back to

* the camera is mostly not too bad, but there are times when the fixed camera positions were frustrating.

Anyway, I was transported to another world, made some hyperactive sprite friends and had a good time.

Amazing world created by Runic Games with a soundtrack of iconic Matt Uelmen known from Diablo I and II music, so sad that developers like this are disappearing from the market...

Really lovely game!
Puzzles and secrets are fairly easy and clear, which I personally enjoy very much. It's great fun to unlock the different stages and abilities. I also like how there are always unlockable shortcuts. This makes the game quite forgiving, when it comes to misplaced jumps or similar mistakes. Nothing frustrating like in other titles, which want to be difficult and challenging.
The gameplay mechanics are simple, but I don't need something more complicated. Overall a joyful experience.

I especially like that the music is only introduced periodically and for most of the game you have very nice atmospheres.
The world itself is great to dive into!

firstly i gotta say amazing game

i like the puzzles and exploration part of the game
the combat is just basic (some enemys require you to figure out how to accualy damage them)

now the bad
the game have way to many bugs some are rather frustrating and i am gonna have to spoiler tag some of them cause they give away some parts of the game
1. Jank ability: moving grapple points not moving the character or not allowing you to jump of to the side
2. Jank enemy: enemys wich require you to grapple armour of them sometimes just break the line or dont allow you to grapple them in the first place
3. T-pose: tapping shield immidiatly after you got hit makes you unable to take any action other then move arround while the charracter seem to be stuck in something resembling a T-pose
4. Flying: jumping into running water from the side will send you flying across the map
5. stuck: you risk getting stuck in terrain when jumping from above resulting in you getting killed or having to respawn (technicly respawn allso kills you)
6. terrain push: sometimes terrain pushes you away from it for no reason this can result in you having to use up to 30 sec to get back just for another try (made me give up on a secret cause it kept happeing)

TLDR: good game many bugs

A work of Art. very similar to hyper light drifter. I enjoyed the moments that allowed you to take in the scenery.

What a hidden gem, surprised this game isn't talked about enough! Deserves all the praise. Absolute masterpiece.

short and sweet. Excellent concept. Excecution needs a little work, more than half my deaths were from bouncing off things it wasn't clear were unscalable or off terrain I was stuck on. Combat flows well and the upgrades don't feel onerous.

This game is a masterpiece. The world building and interconnecting of the map is on a level with Fromsoft favorites Dark Souls and Bloodborne. The story and how it's told remind me of Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, and The Last Guardian. The characters are charming and they speak in gibberish. Highly recommend to anyone who loves to explore and feel immersed in a world.

I've been wanting this game for a while based on the trailer but I quickly became discouraged due to there being no English dialog or defined objectives in this game which makes it difficult to know what you're supposed to do.
After forging the sword and shield there are zero indications of what to do next. I just run around aimlessly hitting everything and trying to access parts of the map I can't get to.

There were a couple of times I had no idea where to go next, which was very frustrating, but overall a great puzzle 3d platformer game.

A fun little experience that is well worth the time.

the art in this game is amazing

Pretty neat little Zelda clone. Graphics are better than what the screenshots make it appear, but need to make sure to calibrate the gamma so the colors are saturated. Like the atmosphere and quiet soundscape, very peaceful world. Combat is no sweat and neither are the puzzles. Just a sublime adventure.

This is almost a good game, but it's flaws add up to something I'd just as soon have not played. Minimalism is all well and good when done properly, but in this case it just winds up being a very thin experience. Combat is extremely basic, mostly perfunctory. Very few different enemy types, all with predictable attack patterns. Lots of sitting around waiting for an opening. Some of them are real damage sponges too, especially if you don't find all the sword upgrades.

Admittedly combat is not the main focus of the game, but the trend of overall "thin"-ness extends to the puzzles, the artwork, and the story. This game has puzzles in the same way that putting together IKEA furniture is a puzzle; it's obfuscated some by the level design, but the entire game boils down to "push button, open path to next button." I'll admit the art/graphics of this game are solid, but again they wear on you by the end. There's essentially one biome in this game so it all looks same-y; expect to see similar sweeping vistas over and over.

Lastly, the game lacks polish on a technical level that leads to a fair bit of frustration. Fixed camera angle + platforming = lots of falling that doesn't feel like your fault, leading to deaths or repeating tedious climbs until you happen to get it right. It's also fairly easy to get your character stuck in the scenery, forcing a respawn and losing progress.

Overall not the worst game I've played by any stretch, but all of its flaws add up to something I'd just as soon have never played.

The story dosent exist. A platform game. But! it can be played!

This game is the definition of a hidden gem, everyone should know about for all kinds of reasons and yet if is completely forgotten. For it has an absolutely gorgeous cell shaded art style and pretty much everything looks incredible. It is essentially a 3D metroitvania, a 3D plarformer, a puzzle game and it even has some sweet combat. The result is a beautiful adventure that is in many ways one of a kind.

This game is very pretty, but also rather buggy. While in combat, you can trigger cut scenes, which doesn't stop the enemies from attacking you. While trying to trigger cut scenes, there is a decent chance that the game thinks you want to attack. Sometimes you will be able to jump down off a ledge, and other times you can't jump down if your life depended on it because you keep grabbing the ledge and pulling yourself back up. Sometimes ladders just let you clip through them instead of you climbing them. Most of the time to climb ladders you point up on the analog stick. Sometimes you don't, you have to point left or right.
Sometimes the giant fish swim over the land instead of only in the water. There are places in the water that you can't actually get out of because the only path out is being blocked by invisible water currents, which just soft locks you (thankfully there is a respawn option in the menu, I couldn't even get to anything to kill me so I could skeleport)

I really wanted to like this game, but it is so frustratingly inconsistent and buggy and honestly it seems to only get worse the more hours I put into the game. Reached a point that the annoyance outweighs the joy of playing

Good game
Could be a bit more polished but gameplay is fine and entertaining

A lovely game about exploring the ruins of a world and restoring it to a semblance of its former glory.

I thoroughly enjoyed it. The visuals were fantastic (the wildlife in particular was strange and wonderful), and the play rewarding as you develop mastery of both the character and your understanding of the world.

My only nit was that one ability (the grapple) was a little janky when platforming, but this didn't meaningfully affect the overall experience.

Overall: fantastic, highly recommended if the visuals appeal to you and if you like platformers.

Awesome game.

Not a bad game necessarily, but I certainly wouldn't call it good either.

I get the inspiration. It's blending the design of Zelda: A Link to the Past with the ideology of Journey. In other words, Hob is a Zelda-like that seeks to tell its story and setting all without any dialogue. Unfortunately, it fails to meet any strides of both inspirations. It lacks the emotional beats of Journey and the design sense of Zelda.

It looks very pretty, and the idea of literally piecing the world together through your actions is a really neat idea. But the lack of dialogue or any words prevents me from knowing or caring about anything that's going on. What is Hob btw? Your guess is as good as mine, and I beat the game! Is Hob the world? Is the player character called Hob? Is the parasitic... thing infecting the world called Hob? We don't know.

And without any labels or map sectors, the game lacks any landmarks to be able to follow its world properly. I swear I had to make leaps of faith in order to progress in places it doesn't seem like I should have.

The combat is actually really solid, and again it does look very pretty. But as a Zelda-like, it can only be described as very generic and uninteresting.

super world building with unique style. it's combine good puzzle + and great action exploring genre. really recommended if you like puzzle game!

Occasionally frustrating (had to refer to walkthroughs on a couple of occasions, and the game is OPPOSITE of handholding) but once you get the hang of it, and make progress, what remains is a really lovely, satisfying game with great puzzle solving mechanics and intriguing level design.

What drew me to the game was Matt Uelmen's soundtrack (composer for Diablo I+II), but I had a terrific time. 10 hours for a casual playthrough.

Basically a puzzle game. Except for the final boss match, the combat is pretty easy, so it's really all about finding the path and figuring out the next steps. Very pretty scenery. Interesting, albeit a bit confusing, story line. And I like the alternate endings - definitely gives you something to discuss when finished.

Tried this game after several years. Very glad that I did.. very nice puzzles..

great game
this is a must play

Chill, kind of cozy 3d platformer game with non-trivial puzzles and some light combat.
I'm generally not into platformers, but since this is coming from the guys who literally made Diablo 1 and Diablo 2,
I just had to try.

The start might be a bit confusing, since you have no tutorial, no map, no instructions, got to get familiar with the map and solve your first "platformer puzzle" to really start the story, but that is also a beautiful way to do the tutorial - you learn by playing, one step at a time.

Absolutely no regrets. The game has a soul.

Seriously so underrated. The atmosphere is incredibly unique.

This game should be played by more people. I love the vibes, world, riddles, and how responsive the controls are. My favorite aspect of Hob is how its world is constructed and how much impact you have on it.

Don't get me wrong it's not a perfect game, I had constant glitches and hang ups throughout, but on a side note the gameplay makes up for that by far. I give it a 7 out 10

A really, really cool game. Exploring the world felt really good and solving puzzles felt very tactile in a way. All the moving machinery felt very satisfying and therefore made me feel engaged and wanting to keep playing. The amount the world changes throughout is crazy and I think that is part of what makes this game so satisfying and intriguing. Absolutely loved it! I think the only problems I had with it was a very random crash, parkour sometimes felt extremely trick due to the camera, and collectables were incredibly difficult to find at the end when looking for the last few because they don't come up on the map!! They didn't take away from the experience too much and it is still a recommendation from me!

Just didn't click with me

Loved this!

It's a refreshing puzzle/exploration game which gives you bare minimum hints and guides. And that encourages you to walk around, and observe your surroundings more.

How the game was really fun and impressive.

The combat part was also quite satisfying and not too hard. Sometimes it took a while for me to figure out the mechanic. If you expect more challenging experience, you could be slightly disappointed. (There is a option for the difficulty in the settings though.)

Since the game itself is amazing, teeny tiny things bothered me, like if you explore backward (ex. from end of the dungeon to the start), or triggering the same gimmick more than once caused a weird behaviour. I understand that going backward is not the expected action, but I wish those possibilities were covered/supported by developers.

All in all, the experience was wonderful!

Realment me gusto el video juego, lo descubri esta semana y a pesar de que saliera en el 2017 puede competir con cualquier indie de este año

Aqui comparto mi video review en el que incluyo HOB

https://youtu.be/lvNT-J885pg?si=0T5_j_qNtZyg2Vro

great one for puzzle-lovers

has some bugs, f.e didn't show the next mission on map (maybe this is not a bug, im not sure)
would be great to have subtitle. i didn't get what the woman says in the end to choose the ending