Legacy of the Long Mover: A Hohokum retrospective
Revisiting Hohokum after close to a decade is intoxicating. The effervescent, swirling toybox has lost none of its giddy charm, and coasting through levels as the aptly named Long Mover (yes, that is an unashamed Mighty Boosh reference) remains a uniquely therapeutic experience.
Plunging back into the frenetic, pulsating playroom is akin to reacquainting with your favorite record after months or years apart. As it spins on the turntable, the lyrics and chords will come flooding back through the crackling static, but you'll also find yourself re-discovering nuances and layers that had somehow become lost among retreating tides of memory.
I know that sounds overly indulgent. Pretentious, even. But anyone who's familiar with Hohokum will know words alone struggle to capture the heady brilliance trickling from every pore of Sony Santa Monica, Honeyslug, and Richard Hogg's ode to play. It remains a game that's almost impossible to describe using even our vast lexicon, and unfurling the ineffable mysteries that have become the title's beating heart was as much a challenge for Hohokum art director Richard Hogg and lead programmer Ricky Haggett as it remains for players.
During a recent chat with Game Developer, Haggett and Hogg explain the title started life as something altogether more conventional. The two friends had come together to work on a video game project based on some of Haggett's sketches, which, while vastly different from the finished product, contain plenty of Hohokum's offbeat DNA.
"I was literally drawing things and sending them to Ricky and going 'I don't really know what this would be in video game form, but maybe it could be something?' I was drawing all sorts of strange things," recalls Hogg.
Haggett,
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