No longer to sound judgmental, but about a of y’all accessible are actually into the colorful of anime ladies blowing clouds of smoke. While you happen to quantity among them, I actually have pretty info! Hookah Haze is a sport about staring at anime ladies exhale billowing clouds of smoke. Primarily basically based totally on my social media feeds, that on my own wants to be enough to plot in a no longer-insignificant contingent of followers. I’m you, fellow ANN reviewer Steve Jones.
For the rest of us, Hookah Haze comes across as a piece of a lesser copycat of VA-11 Hall-A, the acclaimed visual unusual/inch sport about bartending in a cyberpunk future. While it takes space in in model-day Akihabara, the colorful of unlit lighting, purple/cyan neon lighting, and costume assemble that will perchance well perhaps undercover agent at dwelling at a rave provides it a a similar “cozy cyberpunk” sensibility. The gameplay is easy, with some minigames for mixing shisha to shatter completely different flavors and changing out the coals to procure the smoke at pretty the pretty power to destroy up the visual unusual dialogue.
What makes it lesser than its predecessor and a pretty forgettable, if excellent, sport overall is how superficial most of it’s. You play as Tohru, a twenty-one thing who has spent most of their life plagued by an unspecified debilitating sickness. Your most in model try at therapy has failed, and you’ve gotten gotten made up our minds to circulation into palliative care as a alternative of making an try the closing remaining option. Your physician recommends you are trying Final Select, a program for terminally in uncomfortable health sufferers to procure to stay out one closing fable sooner than passing on. Your desire is a minute bit extra summary than most: you esteem to must assemble connections with others, one thing that has repeatedly been sophisticated ensuing from your sickness. Your physician suggests the expend of your pursuits, hookah and aquariums, and objects you up with a store in Akihabara. They also give you enough painkillers to closing two weeks in mumble that you just would perhaps well well perhaps perhaps feature successfully enough to bustle a alternate.
It would now not plot end long sooner than customers starting up showing up, and you utilize two weeks attending to know your regulars. These regulars are three ladies: Amu, an Akihabara maid who is as spoiled as she is simply correct; Kokoro, whose cheerfulness masks trauma and deep sadness; and Kurumi, a doll model designer who is as alive to with nuts as she is nutty. They chat over shisha, attending to know one one other as successfully as Tohru. As is often the case in these forms of games, you develop gradually nearer to every as they slowly originate up about their complications, at the same time as Tohru remains reticent about their very maintain.
The spot is, two weeks pretty will not be any longer actually a actually long time. It stretches credibility that the characters would procure such deep bonds and procure to know one one other’s components in this kind of transient duration. I’m no longer announcing you would perhaps well well perhaps perhaps no longer sense a kinship with folk pretty away, but the structure is that Tohru no longer entirely hears about their components but helps them starting up taking steps against resolving them. The result’s that the whole lot feels compressed and shallow, ranging from a space of archetypes to shatter the characters actually feel familiar in wish to building them from the ground up. Kokoro acts peppy to veil her insomnia and psychological wounds? Why, you assemble no longer say! The writing is agreeable enough, but combined with a transient bustle-time – or no longer it’s imaginable to attain the total routes in an afternoon – the ground-stage persona writing makes it so the story’s meditations on mortality have entirely a little impact.
The gameplay is kind of unexciting as successfully. It be a visual unusual first and predominant, so I assemble no longer have excessive expectations beyond clicking to advance the dialogue and making the occasional different, but it undoubtedly’s nerve-racking how minute the minigames topic. And once I say they topic minute, what I actually indicate is they assemble no longer topic at all. Each day, your customers let what extra or much less blend they want, but whether or no longer you combine one thing they esteem has no concerning the build. Same with resetting the coals, which occurs in the center of every consult with; you would perhaps well well perhaps position it so hot they scald their throats and they would preserve showing up.
The entirely participant picks that shatter to any extent additional or much less distinction are what blends to position as the every single day special, which determines who shows up; and at the conclude of every route, whether to procure the pretty or unfriendly ending. Narrate how I phrased that – or no longer it’s blindingly glaring which different is pretty, whether you are alive to with what the pretty ingredient to attain or say is, or you undercover agent that the “good” different is repeatedly on the left and the “bad” different is repeatedly on the pretty.
However I procure it – the level will not be any longer actually a wretchedness, or no longer it’s vibes. And I must confess, Hookah Haze‘s vibes are impeccable. The moe-model persona designs will now not be my tempo, but the 2-dimensional pixel artwork is stunning. While I’ve never been a smoker, there’s positively a distinct pride in staring at the characters plot end a long, insensible inhale from their pipe and blow out the smoke with a a long way flung undercover agent of their eyes… I’d be lying if I stated that I did now not plot end into consideration wandering over to the hookah bar two blocks away a couple of times. There is a programmable playlist of low-fi beats, but with one spacious downside: songs will restart if a new scene comes up in the center of the tune, but the tracks are longer than most scenes. After manually skipping to the following tune a couple of times, I turned into off the tune altogether and pretty loved the rain sounds that shatter up the ambient background noise.
Hookah Haze became a wonderfully excellent manner to utilize an afternoon, but with other games that attain a similar things but better accessible, I’m no longer distinct I will actually counsel this. Properly, unless you are a form of perverts (I say with affection) that loves anime ladies smoking. If so, hotfoot your bliss.
