Well, a 90% off coupon for Adventures of Hooi floated across the ethereal surface of my existential desk today, so I figured, why the hell not give it a go? It fits in well with my recent attempts to play the bundle games in my library, and despite not having actually bought this in a bundle, it still qualifies given as how I paid 30 cents for the game. So, what can one expect from this game?
I have no idea. There could be one, and it has all the hallmarks of an intro to some adventure, but there isn’t actually a story in the game. Basically, you start out in a dungeon, start to gear up, and away you go….for about 12 minutes. I will note however that it is a single adventure, not “Adventures” as indicated in the title.
With the new Big Picture Steam functionality, I was able to set almost everything to my gamepad, which for Adventures of Hooi means basic movement functions, an interact button, and an attack button (plus I set F12 to the Reset button)…and really, that is as much as there is to the gameplay as well.
You will read a couple plaques, which tell you what you need to progress, after which you will search one or two rooms to find said objects. You will fight some green blob looking critters (represented on the product page picture), some fireball spitting flowers, and a trio of ghosts/specters.
Your weapons consist of a swords, an axe, an ice wand, and a fire wand. There are three potions (heal, mana, and mana boost (I think, although the third potion’s title cut off at “potion of”). You will also find a set of armor, a helm, and an amulet of stamina. Every item you find goes into a numbered inventory slot keyed to the same number on your keyboard. You can also equip a few items at once (one weapon and the armor/helm/amulet you found). There was one room I didn’t explore, and possibly something else was in there.
That is basically it. I couldn’t really notice any real difference in damage amounts between the weapons and it seemed like I took the same amount of damage regardless of any armor or lack thereof.
Despite being insanely short, the actual game design was solid. Of course, it was not vast by any stretch of the imagination, but what was added to the game at least made sense and had a definite sense of progression.
I will however use this slot to talk about pricing a bit. I question whether I should even have paid 30 cents for a 12 minute experience. A second playthrough would likely weigh in at probably half that since I know the layout and there was only one different decision to be made. However, it is listed at $1.99 (USD) and I feel that is most definitely not acceptable. I think you could charge $0.49 and people wouldn’t balk at that, but any more than that is far more than the experience merits.
6 out of 10
The graphics look exactly like another game I played and reviewed called Moirai as far as graphics go, and are basically emblematic of block design used back in the original doom era of dungeon crawler gaming. Just as with the gameplay, the graphics are handled well despite their aged appearance. Since this was an intentional decision, and the decision paid off at the end, I feel they were decent balanced against the graphics engine used.
6 out of 10
The only audio I can recall are the sounds of object interaction and combat, and these really were maybe five total sound effects. It seems to have lacked any real effort in this department.
3 out of 10
As a free to play or sub 50 cent title, I would recommend giving Adventures of Hooi a try. I absolutely, unequivocally DO NOT recommend buying this at the full store price or indeed anything more than 49 cents. You simply will not get value for your purchase. That said, it was a decent 12 minute experience and it would be my hope that the developer takes some time to maybe create some lore to go with this potential world and definitely to create a lot more content. I would also recommend opening up the other four numbered inventory slots so you have ten slots total.. It would make things a bit more interesting.
As such, I am going to mark this with a thumbs down. Lower that price though and I would give it a thumbs up instead and maybe another .5 to the score to reflect this fact.
