Harold Halibut

The game is very enjoyable and unique. There are some glaring logic inconsistencies feeling a bit like the writing got lazy especially towards the end but if you are willing to look past a few things that do not make sense you will have a really good time. The game is unlike any other game I have played which really can break up the monotony of a lot of similar games on the market.

Harold Halibut is a strange game and I don't think everyone would enjoy it. I would recommend it to you if you would like a game that feels similar to a point-and-click adventure but with no real puzzles to solve or choices to make, and whose story, although interesting, is fairly slow paced. One of the big attractions of the game is that everything is handmade. I had expected it to look something like The Neverhood (or Armikrog) with filmed stop-motion animation but instead it was fully 3D and rendered in real time. All of the objects in the game are handmade but then digitally scanned and brought into the game and used as standard but high-quality 3D models with but standard but high-quality textures. The mouth movements have kind of a stop-motion feel to them but everything else is smoothly animated and dynamically lit. Another reason to recommend the game is if you are interested in the look of it, although that probably won't keep your interest through the whole game (the characters you meet and areas you explore are fairly limited). I also found the cinematography of many of the cutscenes to be surprisingly well done in a game that otherwise felt more indie (like, the animation of your character walking up or down stairs is incredibly janky but then in contrast the camera animation looks really good and artistic). The story is interesting, both in the traditional sense that I was interested to see what happened next but also in the sense of several things about it being odd. I think your appreciation of the game will largely depend on your tolerance for these oddities. There are some moments that can be surprisingly affecting and also themes that can really make you think but I imagine that not everyone that plays will have the patience to engage with it on that level. There is quite a bit of humor, some of which I found to be genuinely funny but some of which I found to be more awkward (and I was often unsure how intentional the awkwardness was). The characters seem to be intentionally quirky which I think works for the vibe that the game is going for but led to behavior that I often didn't find realistic. One of my favorite things about the game was probably the setting; although the world building wasn't necessarily realistic in a hard science fiction way I thought the whole experience was pretty immersive and so I felt like I got to experience living life on this strange ship. The gameplay itself, as I mentioned earlier, is very lacking. It initially felt like a traditional game, but the more I played the more I realized that there wasn't really anything to do except going from one (almost always) clearly-written objective to another. I don't think there is a single action you can take that has any effect on the story, although there is optional content you can miss if you don't talk to everyone every day. There isn't an inventory and dialogue options are rare. There are occasional sequences that are like minigames but there aren't really any challenges so it's more miniactivities rather than minigames. The game is really about experiencing the story, where you move the controller to walk from one part of the story to the next. I'm the kind of player who is generally ok with this lack of gameplay but even so I was pretty ready by the end for the game to wrap up. This review probably sounds more negative than positive so I should probably end by emphasizing that I liked the game and am glad that I played it. It was made with a lot of creativity and clearly a labor of love for the developers and I think for the right person this will be a really cool experience that will stick with you.

Artstyle: abselute PEAK. story: pretty peak. ending: wierdly peak. music: ABSELUTLY PEAK. Characters and their stories: PEAK. ability to really set feelings asail: Check. playable with any pc: check You can feel its indie but that doesnt change my mind when i tell you this game is abselutly peak. I now have a personal conenction to this game.

Чудернацька та незвична гра, про знаходження свого місця в житті. Сюжетно досить приємна гра, цікаво спостерігати за історією (жанрово це щось середнє між меланхолійною драмою, антиутопією, сатирою та фантастикою), що чудово підкреслюється неймовірним візуалом, що однозначно є її основою прикрасою. Все виглядає як ляльковий мультфільм, і сприймається я вам скажу, дуже свіжо і цікаво. Єдиний ньюанс, і я б сказав що досить серйозний, це що гра - ізометричний симулятор ходьби. Тут ну вкрай мало геймплею, настільки, що його фактично не існує, все що ти робиш, це бігаєш з точки А до точки Б, за новою порцією діалогів, і далі знову бігаєш, уже до точки В, Г Д, і так всю гру. Два пазла, і марафон ходьби. Нелінійності тут немає, фінал тут один, інтерактивності тут доволітаки мало, тому не зовсім зрозуміло чому ця історія стала саме грою, а не якимось фільмом чи взагалі серіалом. Тим не менш я не вважаю що гра погана, історія та візуал справді чудові, і коштують того щоб спробувати. Тому скажу так: якщо ви готові сприйняти Харольда Халібута, не як гру, а як такий собі мультфільм від студії А24, у якому так трапилось, що можна походити за головного героя по локаціям, тоді можете спробувати, досвід буде цікавий. Якщо ж ви хочете саме пограти в гру, тоді однозначно пропускайте цей проект, бо грати тут немає в що.