One of my favorite genres to just chill out and play has to be the puzzle-platformer. You’d imagine my excitement when I had heard about PM Studios and Skrollcat Studios’ latest project, Hoa. A puzzle-platformer with the look of a Studio Ghibli film, it had an emphasis on being relaxing above all.

Upon playing it, the game instantly dug its teeth into me as I walked through its gorgeous-looking lands until I finished. Even though I had a truly enjoyable time with Hoa, that’s not to say that it was a bed of roses.

Story

I won’t be talking about Hoa’s story much because the game keeps its cards close to its chest until the very end. What I can say though is that it paces the story beats properly enough to keep you interested and asking questions. It’s an emotional story for sure and well worth the price of admission.

Gameplay

As I stated above, the game focuses on being more relaxing than anything else. That’s not to say that the platforming can’t be challenging. What I mean is, you don’t have to worry about dying and you won’t be pulling your hair out over extremely difficult sequences or puzzles.

It’s a difficult enough game yet manages to hit its ceiling and remain a stress-free experience. Most of the time, you’re going through each level collecting the five needed butterflies in order to appease the levels’ main gatekeeper.

Once you complete these levels, most of the gatekeepers will then teach you a new action that you can use. These range from ground-pounding, to double-jumping, to flying. Each level following the knowledge of these actions will allow you to put them to the test.

By the end of the game, it becomes a true challenge to see just how fluent you’ve become with the actions you’ve acquired. The progression and adaptability you find in the gameplay are pretty addictive and I enjoyed myself very much so throughout.

By far, the very best level of the game is the last. I don’t want to spoil it, but it was truly one of the more unique experiences I’ve seen this year. With how easy the gameplay can be during your playthrough, the end level really doesn’t hold anything back.

Audio and Visuals

The word “gorgeous” simply doesn’t do this game justice. The music is sweeping, heavy, and pure. The same goes for its visuals. Just when I thought that I had seen everything the game had to throw at me, it upped the ante that much more. I was in awe the majority of the game due to its sights and sounds.

What It Could Have Done Better

Although I didn’t experience issues on the Steam version of the game, this wasn’t my first rodeo trying to play the game. The first version of Hoa which I was sent, was for Xbox Series X|S. Unfortunately, there’s an ongoing bug that renders it absolutely unplayable. You can boot the game up but it gets stuck at the PM Studios logo and doesn’t move past that.

To make matters worse, this is a known issue by both PM Studios and Skrollcat but is still ongoing to this day, since launch. That means that Xbox players have not even been able to play the game they bought over a week ago. Besides a single message on the Hoa official Twitter account, the team has not responded as to when these players can even expect to play the game.

Verdict

Hoa is an extraordinarily beautiful title inside and out. Its gameplay is simple joyous fun and I really loved my time with it. I wish that there were more simple games like this as I feel reinvigorated after having played it. It was refreshing.

What wasn’t refreshing was waiting over a week to play the Xbox version with no response as to when it would be playable. Issues like this hold games back far too often these days and the devs and/or publishers need to become more transparent with their players in order to establish any kind of trust, not ignore their questions.