Update 3/21
Harold Halibut
Developer
Slow Bros.
Publisher
Slow Bros.
Release
2024
Harold Halibut is a handmade narrative game about friendship and life on a city-sized spaceship submerged in an alien ocean. Join Harold as he explores a vibrant retro-future world in his quest to find the true meaning of ‘home’.
www.eurogamer.net
I never love defining one game with another, and not least a game like Harold Halibut, which wears its influences openly - stop-motion, Wallace and Gromit-style Aardman animations, mixed with maybe a bit of Wes Anderson and in all seriousness, Postman Pat - but which also so clearly deserves to be seen as its own thing.
As for Harold Halibut, Harold is a lab assistant-cum-janitor on a similarly stranded spaceship that has instead become an underwater enclave, after arriving at a presumed Goldilocks planet that actually turned out to have no inhabitable land. Having set off in the late '70s and since been totally submerged beneath this new planet's oceans, though, the ship has become a kind of strange, alternate-universe time capsule, filled with fuzzy CRT monitors, intercoms with wobbly sound, and very specific kinds of little England jobsworths. (Much of Harold Halibut, a narrative adventure game about completing largely mundane tasks as a wider, more existential mystery unfolds, feels like a trip to the local Post Office, where you're informed you can't send that letter because you've placed your stamp slightly too close to the label. And that's the wrong kind of envelope.)
With the animation style in mind it all combines into something exquisitely tactile - there are wonderful buttons and levers and rotating doors - and the environment design, which feels as much like actual set design, proper prop work, is lavish with detail, each room a diorama that's been staged and lit to perfection. It's an eminently screenshottable game, as my bursting storage will tell you, but as much as it's tempting just to linger on the beauty of it - on the little faux chips of paint in Harold's hair, the confoundingly wooden-yet-fluid animation - the real magic is in how this world's been fleshed out beyond its appearance.
www.gematsu.com
Harold Halibut - Release Date Trailer - 16th April
https://www.reddit.com/r/PS5/?f=flair_name:"Trailers & Videos"
Harold Halibut
Developer
Slow Bros.
Publisher
Slow Bros.
Release
2024
Harold Halibut is a handmade narrative game about friendship and life on a city-sized spaceship submerged in an alien ocean. Join Harold as he explores a vibrant retro-future world in his quest to find the true meaning of ‘home’.
Harold Halibut turns Starfield's best side quest into a vividly human world
A look at Harold Halibut's demo, which is a vivid, tactile delight.
www.eurogamer.net
I never love defining one game with another, and not least a game like Harold Halibut, which wears its influences openly - stop-motion, Wallace and Gromit-style Aardman animations, mixed with maybe a bit of Wes Anderson and in all seriousness, Postman Pat - but which also so clearly deserves to be seen as its own thing.
Harold Halibut
- Developer: Slow Bros.
- Publisher: Slow Bros.
- Platform: Played on PC
- Availability: Out TBC 2024 on PC (Steam) PS5, Xbox (Game Pass)
As for Harold Halibut, Harold is a lab assistant-cum-janitor on a similarly stranded spaceship that has instead become an underwater enclave, after arriving at a presumed Goldilocks planet that actually turned out to have no inhabitable land. Having set off in the late '70s and since been totally submerged beneath this new planet's oceans, though, the ship has become a kind of strange, alternate-universe time capsule, filled with fuzzy CRT monitors, intercoms with wobbly sound, and very specific kinds of little England jobsworths. (Much of Harold Halibut, a narrative adventure game about completing largely mundane tasks as a wider, more existential mystery unfolds, feels like a trip to the local Post Office, where you're informed you can't send that letter because you've placed your stamp slightly too close to the label. And that's the wrong kind of envelope.)
With the animation style in mind it all combines into something exquisitely tactile - there are wonderful buttons and levers and rotating doors - and the environment design, which feels as much like actual set design, proper prop work, is lavish with detail, each room a diorama that's been staged and lit to perfection. It's an eminently screenshottable game, as my bursting storage will tell you, but as much as it's tempting just to linger on the beauty of it - on the little faux chips of paint in Harold's hair, the confoundingly wooden-yet-fluid animation - the real magic is in how this world's been fleshed out beyond its appearance.
Harold Halibut launches April 16 for PS5, Xbox Series, and PC, later for PS4 and Xbox One
Handmade stop motion-inspired adventure game Harold Halibut will launch for PlayStation 5, Xbox Series, and PC via Steam on April 16, followed by PlayStation 4 and Xbox One at a later date, develop…
www.gematsu.com
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