Rebuild a weird world in Hob

Hob is an action-adventure game in which you play a strange creature who, together with his robot sidekick, explores a strange fantasy world, exploring, solving puzzles, fighting monsters and actually expanding and connecting areas of the world. In structure, it’s reminiscent of the Legend of Zelda games, with its combination of expanding exploration and third-person dungeoneering.

A strange new world

Hob features a compelling combination of exploration, combat and puzzle-solving, but the real appeal of this game is the beautiful, mysterious world it creates. Silently evocative, the setting is not only fascinating in its core ideas but beautifully executed and simply enjoyable to look at. It’s good that the game is so visually rich, because it doesn’t devote a lot of effort to writing or dialogue. Most things in the setting aren’t explained, which can reinforce the core mood of evocative mystery but can also simply be confusing. This lack of context does sometimes mean that what you’re supposed to do in Hob can seem frustratingly random, but overall the effect is suitably haunting and strange.

An enticing world to explore

Big, beautiful and both alien and familiar, Hob combines a compellingly-realised fantasy world with fun gameplay that could use a touch more explanation and elaboration. If you don’t mind that, though, there’s lots of great-looking adventure to be had in this game.