It Sleeps Below the Haar

I love this! Story first mentality is always the way to go! Keep up the great work everyone!

Duration: ~3 hour(s) Cosmic horror? In my “cosmic storm zone”? It Sleeps Below The Haar is a short indie horror game with minimal (none?) jump scares, choosing unsettling atmosphere instead. It’s also Scottish. There’s a Doric dictionary right inside the game. The story follows a geologist coming in to study some interesting rocks in a small Scottish village. You’re basically stuck there for a few days as the Haar (fog) is too thick to leave, but you have work to do anyway. Drilling, diving, spelunking. You know, normal geologist stuff. Oh, but don’t walk into the cosmic storm zone. Honestly, there’s a lot of lore in the game, which is nice for people who want to dive into the atmosphere. I read a good amount of it, but the errant typos can make the Scottish accent hard to read. Might just be me, though. I wish there was more to do in the game. There’s a lot, but I feel like there was more to do in the world. More to explore. This is more me telling the dev we like it and want more, though. As it is, you walk around to explore, but there don’t seem to be any real “quests” aside from a couple of side quests and then the main story. There’s a lot of people to talk to, but mostly you just talk to them. The analog horror aesthetic is nice, and the FMV cutscenes worked well with the retro gameplay. Make sure to use the witch stone to enjoy the visuals there, you might might them and that’d be a shame. I don’t really remember anything on the music side, but nothing really sounded odd or bad. Fit pretty well. Honestly, the most I can say in this review is that I kind of liked it and I want more. [hr][/hr] If you’d like to see the game in motion through my eyes, [url=https://kuoushi.com/videos/it-sleeps-below-the-haar-complete-archive/]take a look at this complete archive of me playing it[/url] here. It should give you a good idea of how the game plays and what to expect.

There isn't much of a story as there is world building and a collection of atmospheric attractions. Notes of Roadside Picnic (Stalker), Scottish folk-lore and Molchat Doma. Starring Willem Dafoe from The Lighthouse, as every character. Sending you out on rudimentary fetch quests to provoke your curiosity towards exploration.

Like Arboreta Games' other works, you're dropped in with basic instructions on what to do and little else. All you know is that something WEIRD is going on. And I don't want to spoil it, but there is SO MUCH going on in this game that I couldn't even see half of it on my first playthrough. My computer is a potato, so the game was chugging bad enough that I focused on just the main content, but even what I got there was a LOT! And I don't think the ending will be much more intelligible if I hunted down all the secrets. But for those of you who like to EXPLORE, this is the ideal entry into the Arboreta Games catalog. You'll get the same atmospheric storytelling, the haunting music and visuals, and find yourself wondering, with delight and horror, "what is going on?!"

The only good thing about this game is the first dream you have, that was genuinely creepy but unfortunately sets up an expectation for more and nothing happens. You go through the whole game seeing very interesting sights and some nice underwater segments then you get to the ending and NOTHING happens. You walk around, do some stuff and then it's over. Who cares about all that fancy stuff when in the end it means jack all of crap. It's so epic, so grand scale, so embarrassing.

Interlope into a haunting space and feel as it gets under your skin. A thoughtful of an exquisitely crafted setting, where distinctions -- here/there, above/below, now/then, human/non -- collapse in on themselves the more layers you uncover. Take a few hours, poke around.

Decent little game. Definitely lacks polish. But If you want a short little cosmic horror adventure I'd recommend.

A really cool overall atmosphere to this one, it all ties together really well to draw you in - fit fine!

This is pretty buggy. You can lose a lot of time just by interacting with something that's known to crash the game. There are many bug reports on this game that are seemingly still waiting for updates. I would maybe wait on playing this one until they're resolved. It's incredibly frustrating redoing the starting area of the game after a crash over and over.

A Fun game. An Interesting adventure. The game provides a well done ominous environment that leans more towards suspense than horror. The dialogue was interesting and provided good context to the local area.