HoPiKo Reviews

Really enjoying this game so far! Glad I decided to give it a chance. Love the art style, music and feedback after I beat a stage

I really liked the mobile game. It reamains one of the best indie games I've played to date. This version is literally just a direct upgrade. Upgraded art style and upgraded design. My only complaint is that the game is impossible with only a mouse and keyboard. The controls are clunky and hard to complete with speed. If you use a controller, the game is even better than the mobile version.

Simply unplayable on PC. I've bought the game both on Android and iOS, and they are all perfect including the controls. The PC edition has much more animations, but that's it. Nothing extra. Well that's OK, but there's a mouse assist going on the game, which makes it unplayable. Horrible controls. You can't move the character everywhere, there are some fixed ways unlike the mobile versions.

Towards the end of Hopiko I was beginning to get more and more of a Dustforce vibe. Luckily Hopiko never quite reached the level of insane platforming difficulty Dustforce did towards its end. But I did enjoy the sheer amount precision and speed this game required. Hopiko offers 5 worls to traverse through wherein each proceeding world increases in challenge. Small tweaks are made to the gameplay to keep each world feeling less like the previous. However, by the time World 4 is reached this dries up. One aspect of the game that some may find a bother is in worlds 4-5 there's about a half second of leeway time to figure out the layout and timing of a given level before an untimely game over. This creates the hassle of having to complete all proceeding levels (which are in groups of 5) before getting a chance to learn the succeeding level. This doesn't happen horribly alot but still enough to be a bother.

Actually a very fun game but it's not for everyone: It requires a lot of precision, speed and retrying. If you like things like geometry dash, or super hexagon you'll probably like this game. I'm loving it so far. It also has a great soundtrack. Overall this game is 100% worth the price if it's your kind of thing.

A twitchy puzzle-platformer, where speed and precise analog stick control is key. The game is intense, loud and exciting. However, it also has lots of potential to be frustrating. The necessity to time and aim correctly with the constant pressure of time can get extremely annoying when you can nail the first 4 levels of a run yet the 5th and final one defeats you because you hesitated or you didn't flick the stick correctly and now you have to do the first 4 again with the same precision. Nail-biting moments under pressure are great, but when the game thrives off throwing them at you constantly, you get overwhelmed - I found even with near perfect execution of the shortest path I was cutting it close on time, combining that with the oddity of the controls, you have a frustrating experience - you have to send the stick fully in one direction and then release it to neutral to fire, rather than aiming with stick and firing with a button, and if you think you've flicked and your character doesn't move it can be confusing. There's also a small contradiction in that the game has moving platforms and other elements on cycles, like any other game, but much too often your timing is off by a fraction of a second and the twitchy action grinds to a halt while you wait for your opening to go. This is mostly a problem when you go as fast as you can through a level only to find that timing leaves you launching yourself into enemies rhythmically, forcing you to learn to add a quarter or half of a second to your time when necessary. That in itself can be kind of fun, but I personally find it jarring - especially when combined with the other elements of the game's design. The game's visuals are colourful, vibrant, and fit the game to near-perfection. The use of a single dominating colour per world and the way the world gets progressively darker as you reach the later levels is classic good design and I love it. The soundtrack is wonderful, too. It is top quality chiptune goodness, mostly pounding right in your ears helping you focus on your perfect timing and aiming. Possibly my favourite part of the game, if I'm honest. So really, it might be mostly for the action junkies who want that constant twitch pressure, the VERY rapid iteration on your own skills and overall the intense challenge it provides. I enjoy the game, but not significantly. Given the price tag, I am happy to recommend it to people who think they're the sort who would enjoy it.

Quick Score: 5/5 Notes: Initially my only major gripe with the game was the default control scheme, but after I was reminded of the game several years after I initially played it I decided to try something. Basically, by default the controls are "aim" with analog stick, and "shoot" your character by releasing the stick. I figured out that if you use the "mode shift" function in steams controller config, you can temporarily disable the analog stick, which effectively sends a "release" signal to the game. So by doing this you can aim with analog stick and "shoot" with RT without ever needing to release the analog stick. Strongly suggest trying this out, game feels so much better to play this way. otherwise, game is awesome.

Fantastic music combined with great fast gameplay fitting for the OST pace. Insanely fun both casually and when you try to 100% it. It will require you some time getting used to it but once you do, it'll flow greatly. I have only one complain and it's from the completionist side. [spoiler] World 4 often felt inconsistent because of the snappy aiming, often making you aim somewhere you usually are not supposed to because when your aim snaps to the moving platform, it aims where the platform was when you jumped, not where it will be which cause you to fail. Had a lot of trouble on it while World 5 (even tho it is supposed to be more difficult) felt more consistent. [/spoiler]

I hate that I have to not recommend this, as the game, soundtrack, and levels are really excellent and it's one of the better games out there and a lot of fun...when it works. However, the actual control is probably the single worst setup I have ever seen in my life. The default control is already not great, since you're supposed to aim at platforms in a fast-paced way using the joystick, where it fires on release, leading to awkwardness in aiming which is highly sensitive to controller drift to begin with. Now this bad control scheme I can live with, and there's even ways of rebinding within steam to make it feel good. This isn't the issue. The issue is that there are these cannon platforms where you have to time the button press to fire the cannon in a straight line. These are extremely simple obstacles and most of the time you shouldn't ever fail because of them. However, it's maybe 45% of the deaths you'll experience due to them just deciding to NOT WORK AT ALL unless you jiggle the control stick and pray a bunch that one of your many button presses will trigger it. However, due to all of the timing and cycles you need to hit, not to mention you have a very limited time to beat the stage, any "hesitation" aka mechanics not working will lead to your death. It's truly awful I'm sad to say this isn't the only issue...sometimes when you enter a cannon, it simply fires right away. There's no indication it will do that and there's no reason for it to. As well, sometimes you INSTANTLY fire off a platform after landing on it, immediately killing you since there's no chance to aim. It's ridiculous and these bugs are maybe 45-50% of your deaths if I'm being generous, meaning that a large majority of the difficulty of the game simply comes from the controls not working. I get it's supposed to be a hard game, but when you're able to do a 100% deathless run 10 times in a row of a world, yet died each time to one of the aforementioned issues, it's a huge problem. I've tried all sorts of things to fix this, and I really enjoyed it when the game was working properly, but I just can't with this. It's alright casually with the bugs, as you play the levels in chunks of 5, but trying to do any of the full world runs is like trying to win the lottery. I've tried it on at least 4 computers, one with a different OS, and always had these same issues. Nothing I could do could fix this. Hopiko has the potential to be a 9/10 game, but in reality is a 1/10.

Everybody loves to shoot through barrel chains in Donkey Kong Country (yes you do; don't lie), but what if a game was based entirely upon doing just that—except really, really fast? Super Meat Boy fast? Faster than you can think, operating purely on gut instinct, responding from your prehistoric lizard brain to basic flashes of color and memories of pain? That would be exhausting. That would be exhilarating. That would be HoPiKo.