Hob

I stumbled across Hob while scrolling through Steam and thought, “Alright, this looks interesting.” Picked it up on sale, booted it up… and honestly? At first I was confused. Then it crashed due to outdated graphics drivers. I almost wrote it off.

I’m glad I didn’t.

After fixing the driver issue and giving it another real shot, wow. I was hooked.

The exploration is incredibly satisfying. You press a button, activate a mechanism, and suddenly the world shifts. Entire sections rise, rotate, unfold. The map updates. New paths reveal themselves. You start realizing the world itself is a giant interconnected machine, and every action reshapes it. That feeling of “Wait… what just happened?” quickly turns into “There’s more to explore.”

The underground areas (caves, ruins, whatever you want to call them) are consistently engaging. They challenge you just enough to make you think, but rarely feel unfair. There were multiple moments where I ran back and forth trying to figure something out, only to look up and realize the solution was right there the whole time. That kind of design is satisfying rather than frustrating.

Combat was another pleasant surprise. I set it to easy just to chill, but even then it felt deliberate and tool-driven rather than button-mashy. There’s weight to it. You’re combining abilities and positioning rather than just smashing through enemies. I could absolutely see replaying on a higher difficulty.

The atmosphere deserves special mention. The ambient mechanical sounds, the grinding, shifting, rebuilding of the world, are deeply immersive. There’s something very Dark City-like about watching the environment transform around you. It feels mysterious and slightly alien in the best way.

Overall, Hob is a fantastic experience if you enjoy:
- Exploration-first design
- Environmental puzzles
- A world that evolves as you interact with it
- Light but thoughtful combat
- Strong ambient atmosphere

Don’t let a rough first impression stop you. Once it clicks, it really clicks.

Highly recommended.

Some adventures speak best through the way the world opens in front of me
Hob is a wordless action adventure built around exploration, environmental puzzles, light combat, and a world that physically changes as I repair it. What stood out most to me was that constant sense of transformation, because unlocking new paths and seeing areas reconnect made exploration feel genuinely rewarding. I also liked its art direction and quiet atmosphere, which give the whole journey a calm but mysterious tone. It is not a combat heavy game, but that focus works in its favor.
I enjoyed it because it trusted me to observe, experiment, and slowly understand how its world fit together. For me, that made even simple progression feel satisfying. My main warning is technical, because on Steam Deck I ran into serious performance drops that hurt the flow more than once. Even so, I still recommend it to players who enjoy exploration and puzzle driven adventures, but less to anyone expecting fast combat or a perfectly smooth handheld experience.

Runic Games’s incredible swan song, Hob, is nothing short of a masterpiece. You can feel the love and craft poured into every detail of this passion project. Hob has some of the absolute best world design I’ve ever seen in any game.. impressive and awe-inspiring at every turn. It’s the kind of experience that has to be played to be believed. I’ve truly never seen anything quite like it.
The world is breathtaking, with its clockwork moving pieces constantly shifting and revealing new paths. The atmosphere is pure mystery and discovery, no dialogue, just mood, tone, and exploration. It’s a world you see and feel. The art direction is second to none. Every frame dazzles the eyes, flowing seamlessly from biome to dungeon to newly unearthed landscapes. The size of the world as well is impressive, this game must have cost Runic a small fortune to develop. All that Torchlight 2 money is right there in the screen.
Traversal is one of Hob’s strongest aspects. Unlike most top-down Zelda-likes, it plays like a 3D platformer. The level design is chefs kiss everywhere, half the time it feels like the designers are just flexing. Incredible verticality and Metroidvania-style movement unlocks like the grapple. It’s clear they really took their time weaving together all the interconnected pieces.
It’s not just about unlocking new areas. The world itself reshapes as you progress.. water levels shifting in the overworld, blight dissolving, entire regions transforming like a bunch of clockwork puzzle pieces. Each time, it completely recontextualizes the paths you’ve already taken. From a developer’s perspective, it’s truly awe-inspiring design... intricate, expansive, and brilliantly executed. I'm constantly left wondering what will reshape the world next, and how it will once again change my perspective on the environment.
Combat is the weakest aspect... it's certainly not bad though, it just feels like it got the least polish. Attack windup animations are a tad too long, it makes slashing your sword feel less responsive than other entries in the genre. Still, I thoroughly enjoyed it, it's just not as tight as something like Hyperlight or Link Between Worlds.
In the end, Hob is a game about atmosphere, art, and exploration, and in those regards, it’s absolutely brilliant. It’s evocative, endlessly intriguing, and unforgettable... Runic may be gone, but they left behind something timeless.

This is one of those "I really want to like this game" cases. And I do, as the review states, though there are things to consider.
Pros:
- Fantastic visuals and a nice soundtrack to go with it. The animations of characters are done very well.
- The game revolves around activating and cleansing the world which presents itself as one giant mechanism: you pull a lever, and the world around you shifts, unearthing platforms, passages and even entire biomes from the abyss, which is something that happens in real time, something that is pleasant to observe.
- Hob is a 3D game with a locked camera angle, and it has some vertical movement options, which presents vast opportunities for exploration.
- A somewhat intriguing plot which is narrated through visuals and gestures rather than words.
Cons:
- The combat system is very bland, generic and clunky at times, having about half a dozen of unique enemies that you encounter on a regular basis throughout your playthrough. There are also no boss fights except for the final encounter.
- The game is littered with a vast variety of bugs of different severity. Not the "asians when they have to do a PC port" type of bugs, no, the game is very playable, but some of them include nasty collision bugs that may throw your character out of bounds and kill him, though they are not that often, and some of them even gave me a chuckle, but still.
- The abscence of some QoL features: cutscene skips, faster revives, non-fatal falls.
Still, don't be mistaken, it IS a beautiful game, just one that needed more time in the oven. So yes, I do recommend you checking it out.

People who gave this game negative reviews require more "yellow paint" in their games. This is an incredible game that makes you use your head and the level design is next level.

This is a fun game with some mostly easy combat, decent puzzles, and secrets to find. Saves were generous. Fast travel was easy to use. Upgrades were fun to track down. A couple of times there was some frustration around what to do next, but with some patience I got there on my own.

Hob is one of my favourite games of all time. It is a cute and beautiful world with a purely visually told story. The combat is simple as the focus is on solving puzzles. There is a linear path you can follow, or you can explore and find secrets along the way. There is very little handholding as to where to go most times, and you need to pay attention to the subtle hvisual hints on what to do and where to go next.