As I play by way of the sci-fi journey that’s Harold Halibut, I’m typically reminded of strolling by way of an aquarium. It’s partially as a result of the sport’s attractive environments are submerged in, however it’s additionally as a result of I really feel a childlike frustration on the occasions unfolding in entrance of me. Like a child tapping the glass in hopes of constructing the colourful fish get away of their mundane swimming sample, I need to faucet the glass of Harold Halibut in hopes that the characters inside its world will lastly do one thing of curiosity. However the sport by no means absolutely breaks out of its mundanity.
Harold Halibut has been a long-time coming. The primary sport from developer Sluggish Bros. took 14 years to develop, owed completely to its handcrafted claymation artwork fashion. It’s a hanging visible fashion, however the characters that inhabit the claymation world are by no means given as a lot care because the painstaking method by which they’re rendered.
Below the ocean
Harold Halibut gamers are put within the sneakers of the titular Harold, a lab assistant (who principally will get handled like a janitor) aboard the Fedora, an area ship now submerged underneath water on a toxic planet. 250 years in the past, frightened that the Chilly Battle would destroy earth completely, the All Water Company constructed the Fedora as a life raft meant to protect humanity on a brand new planet. Whereas being caught underneath water wasn’t the unique plan, the residents of the Fedora have carved out a easy life for themselves. Not less than it’s higher than getting nuked into oblivion on Earth, proper?
Harold is one thing of an all-around handyman. Within the opening moments of the sport (which takes roughly a dozen hours to finish) you undergo the motions of Harold’s life, which incorporates strolling across the Fedora to perform duties like cleansing graffiti and changing filters for those that are smarter and appear extremely inconvenienced by your presence. Harold is, sadly, handled because the village fool.
Regardless of the sci-fi setting which will remind gamers of BioShock’s under-water metropolis Rapture, Harold Halibut is fast to point out you that there’s nothing bizarre happening right here—folks dwell boring lives, simply underwater. You’re reminded of this mundanity by having to finish boring chores, till the sport drops a number of plot factors that sign an imminent change in the established order. First, a probe despatched to the floor of the planet receives a message from Earth. Seems the Chilly Battle didn’t finish in a nuclear apocalypse and everyone resides regular lives. Second, Harold discovers an alien creature within the water filtration system. Lastly, the Fedora is operating out of power, which places a clock on how lengthy they’ll all survive. Now issues have gotten attention-grabbing.
Going by way of the motions
Or so that you’d assume. Regardless of data that ought to ship your entire Fedora inhabitants into an existential disaster, life simply goes on. Whereas a number of the forged are searching for options to those new issues, there isn’t a sense of urgency. For Harold, folks proceed to ask him to run errands that pressure the participant to stroll forwards and backwards throughout the identical handful of areas advert nauseam. These are nonetheless mundane duties like choosing up medication and delivering it after which backtracking to inform the pharmacist that you just delivered the drugs. That is one in every of Harold Halibut’s most irritating points—there’s a lack of problem or gameplay selection to maintain the participant concerned. Past strolling so very slowly (even whereas holding the run button) from cutscene to cutscene the sport presents little for the participant to do.
Harold Halibut is ostensibly an journey sport, however it lacks the style’s use of puzzles to provide the participant extra to do. Harold, and by extension the participant, are simply there as a instrument for others. What would possibly work in a special non-interactive medium (say a claymation film, maybe) turns into an unexciting slog as a online game. There are few areas and never a lot to do. Half of Double High-quality’s Damaged Age had a equally constricted house ship setting, however it was filled with puzzles that ensured the participant was considering revisiting previous areas. Harold Halibut lacks that. This wouldn’t be as a lot of a difficulty if the sport’s characters had been attention-grabbing sufficient to propel the participant by way of the story, however the writing of Harold Halibut always falls flat. It’s additionally delivered in voice overs which can be simply as stilted as Harold’s sluggish gait.
When you can see the promise of an attention-grabbing tapestry of lives on the Fedora, the sport itself by no means delivers. Characters are one word, and the conflicts they’ve with one another are always tied up in neat little bows that paint each character as near-perfect. Even the company stooges of All Water are doing the incorrect issues for the fitting causes. The sport always gestures at extra difficult themes however by no means goes close to them, taking part in it protected as a substitute. It performs it protected. Even when it does attempt to upend the established order in a late-game shock, it’s only timidly dipping its toes into deeper water, too afraid to dive in head first.
Handmade spectacle
Harold Halibut could sound like a sport that doesn’t take many dangers, however it does—simply not in its narrative or gameplay. Its artstyle is its riskiest characteristic, a claymation spectacle by which Sluggish Bros. handcrafted each character, prop, and surroundings and scanned them into the sport world in a course of known as photogrammetry. It offers Harold Halibut a one-of-a-kind look with a bodily laptop rendered graphics lack. You may inform these had been all crafted by a human hand, and it’s phenomenal to behold. Discovering a brand new character or surroundings is a pleasure simply because you may see new methods the claymation world was crafted.
Sadly, due to Harold Halibut’s repetitive gameplay, and restricted characters and areas, the visible spectacle shortly loses its luster. . In just some hours with the sport, I noticed all it needed to supply, after which it grew to become as mundane as life on the Fedora should be. It’s regrettable that this lovely world doesn’t comprise a narrative that makes you need to dwell within it for so long as doable, as a result of what Sluggish Bros. has completed is definitely a surprising visible achievement.
Harold Halibut shoots for the moon, and (regardless of lacking its goal) lands amongst the celebrities. In an trade that progressively takes fewer and fewer dangers, it’s a breath of recent air to see Sluggish Bros. take such a giant swing. I hope this sport encourages extra builders to push visible and inventive boundaries sooner or later. Even when Harold Halibut isn’t for me, I’ve to respect its imaginative and prescient.
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