To not sound judgmental, however a few of you might be… Actual within the aesthetics of anime women blowing smoke clouds. In case you are one in every of them, I’ve excellent news! Hookah mist is a sport about watching anime women blow out clouds of smoke. Primarily based on my social media feeds, that alone needs to be sufficient to draw a not insignificant contingent of followers. I’m taking a look at you, fellow ANN reviewer Steve Jones.
For the remainder of us, Hookah mist comes throughout as a little bit of a lesser copy of VA-11 Corridor-AThe critically acclaimed visible novel/journey sport about bartenders in a cyberpunk future. Although set in modern-day Akihabara, the aesthetic of dim lighting, pink/cyan neon, and rave-worthy costume design provides it a equally “enjoyable cyberpunk” sensibility. The gameplay is straightforward, with just a few mini-games of blending shisha to create totally different flavors and swapping out the coals to get the smoke at simply the suitable energy to interrupt the visible novel dialogue.
What makes it a little bit of a letdown from its predecessor and a reasonably forgettable, however pleasurable, sport general is how shallow most of it’s. You play as Tohru, a twenty-something who has suffered from an unspecified debilitating sickness for many of his life. Your final try at therapy has failed and also you’ve determined to modify to palliative care somewhat than attempt the final remaining possibility. Your physician recommends you attempt Final Want, a program for terminally unwell sufferers to dwell out one final fantasy earlier than they die. Your want is a little more summary than most: you wish to join with others, one thing that’s at all times been troublesome resulting from your sickness. Your physician suggests you pursue your pursuits, bong and aquariums, and units you up with a store in Akihabara. In addition they offer you sufficient painkillers to final you two weeks, so you possibly can perform effectively sufficient to run a enterprise.
It doesn’t take lengthy for purchasers to start out coming, and also you spend two weeks attending to know your regulars. These regulars are three women: Amu, an Akihabara woman who’s as spoiled as she is nice; Kokoro, whose cheerfulness belies trauma and deep unhappiness; and Kurumi, a doll designer who’s as obsessive about nuts as she is loopy. They chat over shisha, attending to know one another and Tohru. As is often the case in a majority of these video games, you develop nearer to every of them as they slowly open up about their issues, at the same time as Tohru stays reticent about their very own.
The issue is that two weeks simply isn’t that lengthy. It stretches the credibility that the characters would develop such deep bonds and find out about one another’s issues in such a brief time period. I’m not saying you possibly can’t really feel a kinship with individuals straight away, however the construction is that Tohru not solely hears about their issues however helps them take steps to resolve them. The result’s that all the pieces feels compressed and shallow, ranging from a spot of archetypes to make the characters really feel acquainted somewhat than constructing them from the bottom up. Kokoro performing cheerful to cover her insomnia and psychological wounds? Why, you ask! The writing is nice sufficient, however mixed with a brief working time—it’s doable to do all of the routes in a day—the shallow character writing means the story’s meditations on mortality have solely a gentle impression.
The gameplay isn’t precisely thrilling both. It’s a visible novel before everything, so I don’t have excessive expectations past clicking to advance dialogue and make the occasional selection, nevertheless it’s irritating how little the minigames matter. And once I say little, I actually imply they don’t matter in any respect. Each day your clients let what sort of combine they need, however whether or not you combine one thing they like has no bearing on the plot. The identical goes for re-igniting the coals, which occurs midway by every go to; you possibly can flip it up so scorching it burns their throats they usually’ll preserve exhibiting up.
The one decisions gamers make are what to combine to set because the day by day particular, which determines who seems; and on the finish of every route, whether or not you get the great or unhealthy ending. Discover how I worded that – it’s crystal clear which selection is right whether or not you concentrate on what the suitable factor to do or say is, otherwise you discover that the “good” selection is at all times on the left and the “unhealthy” selection is at all times on the suitable.
However I get it – the purpose is not a problem, it is vibes. And I’ve to confess, Hookah mist‘s vibes are impeccable. The drained-style character designs aren’t my factor, however the two-dimensional pixel artwork is attractive. Whereas I’ve by no means smoked, there’s one thing satisfying about watching characters take lengthy, sluggish drags from their pipes and exhale with a faraway look of their eyes… I’d be mendacity if I mentioned I didn’t contemplate going to the hookah bar two blocks away a few times. There’s a programmable playlist of low-fi beats, nevertheless it has one main downside: the songs restart when a brand new scene comes up mid-song, however the songs are longer than most scenes. After manually skipping to the subsequent track just a few instances, I turned the music off utterly and simply loved the rain sounds offering the background soundtrack.
Hookah mist was a positive strategy to spend a day, however with different video games that do comparable issues however are higher, I am undecided I can actually advocate this. Properly, except you are a kind of perverts (I say this with affection) who loves anime women smoking. Wherein case, pursue your bliss.
