Hokko Spaces Review – A Little World of Our Own

Hokko Spaces is a game where we build a place that looks nice and then watch a few animals enjoy being there. That might be Hokko Spaces in a nutshell, but there’s a lot more to it than that. It’s a safe and relaxing haven that lets us spend time rearranging our town to our heart’s content. Leave your currency and materials at the door. Hokko Spaces has no use for them, as most of the decorations are ready to use as soon as we start. Speaking of starting, let’s get this review on the road as well!

A Garden of Our Own

We begin with a small garden occupied by a pink elephant, although we can also dedicate ourselves to a beach campsite, an autumn café, or, if we’re feeling really adventurous, an almost empty grassy plot. There’s no lengthy tutorial. The game gives us an overview of the tools and leaves us to decide what to build.

The World Builder is what we’ll need to work on the ground itself. We can add and remove blocks of soil, grass, sand, rock, and water, stacking them at different heights to create raised gardens or stretches of shoreline. Please don’t think of this as simply painting one texture over another. No, no. If we build an elevated area and want the residents to reach it, we’ll need to think about adding stairs or ramps. Granted, it’s a small detail, but it sure makes planning a scene a little more interesting.

Next comes the decoration menu, with over 300 objects spread across categories covering plants, furniture, paths, fences, lighting, and smaller items. We could extend the garden towards a sandy beach, put a few chairs beside the water, and surround a picnic spot with flowers. Objects can be moved, deleted, and duplicated, with snapping options to help us line things up horizontally or vertically. Some decorations also come in different colours. There’s nothing to buy or craft, which makes it easy to tear down a design and begin again when that bench refuses to look right.

We can save multiple spaces, and there’s both automatic and manual saving. World Options allow us to switch between four seasons, choose between two weather conditions for each, and adjust the time of day or enable a day-and-night cycle. Changing the same little park from a spring afternoon to a snowy evening makes a noticeable difference without touching a single decoration. We loved playing with these options and seeing just how different everything could look while still feeling wonderfully beautiful and serene.

Bringing in the Locals

There are 26 residents to unlock, and we get to choose which ones appear in each space. These dudes and dudettes wander around, sit on benches, water crops, and play in leaf piles, depending on what we’ve placed. Unlocking one guy, for example, calls for six spooky decorations, two ruin objects, and 20 sand blocks across our creations. Other tasks are less engaging. Changing the weather 20 times can be done by repeatedly switching a menu option. Yup, we thought that was a strange requirement for a game like this, too.

Photo Mode lets us change the framing and focus, apply filters, and even have a resident wave for the camera. We’ve never been particularly fond of photo modes, but here we enjoyed spending a bit of time setting up shots and sharing them with our nephews.

Just One More Decoration

Our score: 8/10

Game at a Glance

• Platforms: PC (Steam), Nintendo Switch
• Developer: Wonderscope Games
• Publisher: Team17
• Genre: Cozy Sandbox, Diorama Builder
• Mode: Single-player