Honcho is an upcoming automobile sim that tasks you with reclaiming your grandfather’s legacy by making your mark on the “cut-throat” world of vending machine tycoonism. According to its developer, Minskworks, Honcho is a “heartfelt story of betrayal, mystery and hope” that will see its protagonist Keiko evolve from deliverywoman all the way up to a property magnate.
Some people aren’t happy about that. Not because you’re roleplaying as a landlord, which would be a justifiable complaint, but rather because you have to play as a woman. As detailed in an interview with Polygon, Minskworks’ developer Greg Pryjmachuk explained that they’d see these complaints about this on X, YouTube, and Discord, but the straw that broke the camel’s back was this post on Honcho’s Steam Discussion Board.
“There’s really only one thing that I am hoping for and that’s the ability to build a play as a male character if you wanted to,” reads the post. “I know I have talked to you on Reddit before, but I’m not a fan of playing a female characters. Kind of ruins my immersion honestly.”
Minskworks is a small independent studio, and Honcho doesn’t even have a publisher yet, so Pryjmachuk didn’t want to dedicate hours of dev time to “animating, rigging, and testing a whole new character model” with custom dialogue and unique outfits. So, they came up with a Resident Evil 2-inspired middleground: Mr. Tofu.
“I’ve added the ability to play as Mr Tofu who is a sentient block of Tofu which hides the players body with option to also hide hands… Hopefully the above is a reasonable compromise,” Minskworks’ dev team stated on the Steam Discussion Board post.
As it turns out, the account that posted the original complaint was actually thrilled with the addition of Mr. Tofu, but Pryjmachuk stressed that the change wasn’t implemented out of bitterness. “While I may not have any interest in self-inserting in the games I play, who am I to dictate how someone else enjoys their media?”