If you’re anything like us, you’ve probably fantasised about what it would be like to be a delivery driver in rural 1980s Japan. No? Just us? Oh well; our very specific desires – and let’s face it, yours too – will soon be fulfilled by Honcho, an in-development indie game that sees you buy, maintain and drive a delightful vintage kei truck amid Japan’s booming 1980s economy.
It’s coming from Minskworks, the UK developer whose previous titles include 2018’s Jalopy. That game saw you travel around the former Eastern bloc on a shoestring budget in a close approximation of a Trabant, and Honcho looks set to follow a similar formula and art style, albeit in a rather different setting and vehicle.
Honcho – maintenance gameplay
The vehicle in question is the ‘Daizo T360’, a tiny Kei truck based on the 1960s Honda T360, the first four-wheeled vehicle made by the company. As with Jalopy, you’ll need to perform maintenance on the vehicle, and you’ll be able to customise and upgrade it too.
As for the plot, you’ll be playing as Keiko, a young woman whose grandfather dies unexpectedly, leaving behind his vending machine empire. You’ll be travelling around a procedurally-generated environment that’s set to include both urban and rural environments, navigating what’s described in a fairly tongue-in-cheek manner as the “the cut-throat and lucrative world of vending machine tycoonism.”
Honcho – driving gameplay
While it’s highly likely that the off-brand Honda will be the only vehicle you’ll actually be able to drive in the game, the screenshots revealed so far show that there’ll nevertheless be plenty to please car enthusiasts with recreations of everyday ’80s Japanese traffic – is that a mish-mash of a Eunos Cosmo and second-gen Nissan Leopard in one of the screenshots?
Hocho’s Steam page doesn’t give a release date yet but given that the game seems to already be in a fairly advanced state of completion, a full release sooner rather than later seems likely. Next year’s set to be a big one for racing games, with Assetto Corsa Evo, Project Motor Racing, a new arcade-focused title from iRacing, and maybe even Forza Horizon 6 all arriving on the scene. Despite all that, could Honcho mount an unexpected challenge and be crowned our 2025 Game of the Year?
