Hob

Positive:
1. The game is very thoughtful in how it unfolds. As you complete various sections of the game, the planet adjusts to reshape the terrain. It's inspiring to watch. The minds that put this together deserve huge KUDOS for their ingenuity.
2. The game is easy enough for most people to complete, yet the problem solving is sufficient enough to feel rewarding.
3. The combat is easy to learn and execute. The enemies deal relatively high damage, but you learn their patterns and what works against them quickly. You can get to where you can dispatches numbers of them without getting hit.
4. The art is beautiful.
5. You get a relatively small set of highly needed abilities. They provide greater access to areas to that you previously couldn't have reached. They are also fun to use.
6. The game has 2 alternate endings, which you can try one after the other pretty quickly.
7. My specs are 5950x (16 core), 64GB 3600MHz, with GTX 1080ti. The game ran as smooth as butter. There was no lag or frame stutter.
8. There are 4 different costumes that you can wear, each providing you with some tradeoff (more health, energy, or speed at the expense of 1 or more of the others).
9. There are teleporters that you discover throughout the game to allow you to traverse the world faster.
Negatives:
1. The game has a bug that cost me 6 to 10 hours of wondering around pointlessly. - There's a point in the game where you bust a hole in the ground. Inside that hole is a power cube. Once you pull it out of it's default hole in the wall, it correctly opens a gate. However, you also need to drag it to a square in it's path to turn on a power generator. Putting on that square did nothing for me the first several times I attempted it. Because it did nothing initially, I wondered around the planet trying to discover what I could do next. I felt stuck. Eventually, I returned and pushed the cube to the square again. This time it worked, and I progressed through the game super quickly. TRULY ANNOYING!
2. The game has a "No Gore" option. This doesn't seem fully complete, though, as some monsters still spurt out whatever fluid they are made of. Several do not. It is so cartoony in nature that it's not offensive enough for me to suggest avoiding the game. It looks like nothing more than green or purple paint being squirted out of a tube.
3. I would've preferred that you could change your costume anytime, rather than have to go back to the only workshop on the map (near the beginning).
General Facts (neither positive or negative necessarily)
1. The game has no dialog or monologue (spoken or typed).
2. It is open world. However, you're also reasonably led along to know what you should do next to complete the game.

7 / 10
Overall a pretty decent 3D puzzle platformer with some light combat and metrovania elements. This game does not try too hard to be something it isn't, which can not be said for most games these days.
One thing I really enjoyed about Hob was the world design, it was varied enough to keep it interesting, but not so varied that it did not feel like one continuous world. The art style worked well for this title as well with all the world transformations you unlock as you complete puzzles. The puzzles themselves were fairly unique from one to the next and not overally difficult, yet still felt rewarding with the world always changing around you. In between puzzles (sometimes during) there are some enemies that needed to be cleared. The combat will not 'wow' you, but was a nice break from otherwise constant puzzles.
One thing I will mention is that many games in this segment attempt storytelling with no text/voiceovers. Many are successful. This title was not. I have absolutely no idea what happened in this game pretty much from start to finish. If story telling weighs heavily on your purchase decision, maybe give this one a skip.
Otherwise Hob was a fairly enjoyable title with about 8 hr core game play depending on how fast you are, but probably another 5 hr or so with all the collectibles to hunt for.

This review is outdated considering I played this game about 2 years ago so my viewpoint might change if I were to play this game again, but I can’t be bothered to do that, so here is my stance on this game from memory. Thankfully, at the time I only suffer from one crash without losing much progress which is good considering that was the main issue I heard this game had at first released. Ok, enough procrastinating, onto the review.
Hob is a light-hearted Metroidvania game that gives players plenty of agency to choose where to explore, swim, climb, teleport, grapple, and fight their way through restoring an artifact gear-like landscape where an unusual tentacle-like crystal creature is taking over. In the end, you decide who you're for and against.
There are several tutorials, giving you hints on how to control your character and how the environment works but for most the part the game releases you off your ledge to figure things out and test the ropes of solving many puzzles, or just exploring around at your own pace. The whole experience was quite relaxing without the game intruding on me to do this one task before the next. It just leaves you to scout ahead working out how the wildlife interacts with itself, and seeing how the building shifts when you solve certain puzzles that change the landscape giving you access to places you couldn't go to before. All of that is gorgeous and satisfying to witness, a reminder of how the journey isn't over yet and there's still plenty more to explore. But saying that, it's quite easy to stuck on a certain task, so don't hesitate to check a guide now and then.
It may take a while to complete the main story of this game or to 100% complete everything (unless you're not me), but it is still worth the experience to finish some of the quests each day if you don't have enough to play games at the moment. As for me, I never get tired of the blocking models and revisiting places I couldn't go to before without unlocking a certain skill I found the pacing of the upgrade quite suitable, not progressing too quickly or too slowly if you know what I mean.
Now onto talking about the combat, it takes a realistic, 'soul-like' approach where you can slice the grass for one, and the need to learn your enemies' play patterns and to be patient when to strike or go on defence. Quite clucky at first, but once you get used to it you'll start to find its charm as it is basically a game of rock, paper, and scissors by checking your enemies on whether they have their guard up or not or of them doing the same to you. Even if you're still finding it difficult to defeat certain enemies it does easier as you play through the game after you upgrade your equipment and stats so the challenge won't last forever. Well, the main challenge with Hob something where fighting the wonky camera position here and there, and finding something to do, other than that I can't of any other significant problems.
So yay, definitely one of my top games at the time, preferring it over Death's Door (another similarish exploration game), but that's down to personal preference. If you think you would like a combat-heavy game with some difficult boss fights, check Death's Door out first, or if you want something else more focused on platforming and solving varieties of different puzzles try Hob instead. Whatever you choose to play, I hope these games keep you busy throughout this year and maybe the next.

I recommend if you want a chill game with straight forward puzzles, a little fighting involved and hidden treasures along the way.

It's a delightful, non-complex puzzle game with a relaxing adventure.

At first I thought I had made a bad purchase, somehow lost, without a concrete idea where to go and what exactly to do. The game offers very little help, it also crashed 2 times and took the PC with it. For a game from 2017, I wondered a bit.
So I got involved and just walked around and searched what arises or not. The game starts to be more fun, I found out that I can find sword fragments and collect skill points, which can then be converted in the workshop info a more powerful sword. I've solved the first "riddles", which cause strange mechanics, which in turn cause structures to appear on which you can climb in order to progress further. This turns out surprisingly satisfying. The puzzles are not difficult so far, once you get to know the environment a bit, you know what to look out for.
The map is exceedingly colorful and coherently designed, runs very smoothly, the controls are accurate, but a controller (Steam-Controllsr works great btw.) is the better option than a keyboard.
One bad thing is that it takes too much extra effort to get 100% of the achievements. Don't get me wrong, I appreciate a challenge, but getting 100% here is clearly too much for me (like the insanely 5h Apeedrun, or the run without Sword ... and killing enemies).
Anyway, a very funny and entertaining game and definitely not a bad investment.

Game design wise, it is a true successor to Ecstatica 2 (1997).
It shares the same philosophy and approach to world building.
But it also has some other side influences like a 2D Zelda-like combat but with a more fleshed out potential, as well as progression system and hidden collectibles that reminded me of Metroid Prime series.
Overall it is hard to convey what is so special about Hob that makes it an exceptional game while being released in 2017.
For sure it has a lot of what's necessary for the modern day game: mesmerizing world that looks alive and breathing, an incredibly smooth animations, cool looking art style and outstanding level design, very crisp looking visuals powered by Ogre3D engine, and my favorite static camera views - all make an unforgettable and lasting impression.
It has some very clever and satisfying puzzles when world and dungeons start to shift and change their layout right before you. And a lot of coolest looking vistas when you'll be awed by the new perspective on the world.
Screenshots or YT footage don't make any justice to this game. You have to see everything it offers first hand. But you have to play it on a PC or at least on a console that supports HD resolution and high framerates.
But what separates it from the crowd is that it borrows a lot from the old school game design and then implements it brilliantly so that it doesn't feel outdated or too harsh for the players to digest.
Part of the core design is that it has a bit of cryptic element to it. A lot of games of the 80s and 90s were cryptic and were somewhat experimental in nature. They were a playgrounds for early game designers when there were still a lot of possibilities and branches of gamedesign to discover.
Hob embraces that idea of enigmatic game world that awaits to be uncovered. Like for example the game doesn't explain you anything with a clear straight-forward text or with a voice in a language you could comprehend. There is some text on the abilities screen to let you know what ability does what, but other than that there's no descriptions found anywhere. Any character you meet along the way doesn't speak human language so you have to guess what they're trying to tell you. The game doesn't even try to describe every interactive object you meet on your way, there's no tutorial so you eventually have to figure it out on your own, and that's what makes it especcially fun. Of course, it's not as cryptic and hard to decipher as let's say La-Mulana. It doesn't go that far.
Overall I'd say it's a very non-verbal experience so everything that you encounter on your way is your experience with it, not something they told you to experience.
You discover this alien world on your own, there's no forced guidance from the developer side in fear that the player could get lost in there.
I think this is what makes this game really special to anyone who ever manages to finish it right to the end. The journey becomes completely yours from start to finish.
In no exaggeration, this last work from Runic Games is a true form of art and sadly as it often goes it remained unrecognized and underappreciated in these days of neverending streams of the samey content.
P.S. Worth mentioning that Tunic, the game that shares a lot of common ground with Hob, is at the spotlight of indie scene these days while Hob back at the release day was mostly ignored by the general gaming audience. What is it if not the bad luck of being under the shadow of Torchlight 2? I guess Torchlight 2 while being a decent game on its own did a lot of harm to Runic Games and to Torchlight series as a whole. ARPG players are unforgiving bunch.