Hobo: Tough Life is an unusual indie RPG game, available for download from Steam. It tells a story of survival, but unlike ordinary games of this genre, you do not go to a desert island, or to the world of a zombie apocalypse, but to … a Czech city. The character you play will be… a homeless person. The company behind the game is the independent Czech studio Perun Creative, for which it is the first commercial production. The title was released on July 25, 2017, and is currently in early access. The game runs only on the PCs with Windows.
How to Download Hobo: Tough Life
To download Hobo: Tough Life, go to the Steam platform. The download is paid. To start, click on the Download button at the end of this review.
The Plot and the Gameplay
The game does not have a particular story to tell. You simply wake up in some godforsaken corner of a city, and your goal is to live as a homeless bum or hobo. During the game, you try to survive and bravely deal with everything that homeless people do. You are looking for food in trash cans, you rummage through all kinds of containers to find useful items. You collect bottles and sell them to get some change. In the meantime, you must take care of your hunger and the general well-being of your character. The game is different than any other RPG. There are no monsters chasing you, or other players wanting your death. Your greatest enemy is poverty and homelessness, which is a topic rarely explored in survival or RPG games.
Hobo: Tough Life: the Game Mechanics
There are many interesting elements in the game. The developers of the Hobo: Tough Life have made sure that the title includes mechanisms known from other survival games. So you have a crafting system – you can prepare food, create clothes or other useful items from the components you collect. The game also features a mechanism that can be tantamount to building your base. In the city, there are several places where you can put create your home. An interesting part of Hobo: Tough Life is a mini-game, which outcome decides how well you are doing in almost every aspect of the game. When you try to steal from someone or create something, a bar with a moving slider appears on the monitor, which should be stopped at the right moment. Then you win, if you are clumsy – you lose.
The Visual Aspect and the Technical Issues
The engine responsible for the graphics of hobo is the well-known Unity. What you see in the game is not the peak of its capabilities though. Anyway, despite some graphical shortcomings, the game is doing well.
It’s hard to compare this game Hobo to other RPG or survival titles. It has a completely different feeling and presents different challenges to the player than the traditional games we all know.