Harold Halibut Review – Lost In Its Own Deep Sea

Harold Halibut places you within the footwear of a lowly upkeep employee aboard a spaceship submerged underwater. To the residents aboard the ship, Harold is a somewhat charming, lovable, even dopey fellow who’s endearing for his simplicity and his complacency in doing his job. Harold is tasked with eradicating graffiti, cleansing, and fixing machines, and when the work is completed, his day ends, he goes to sleep, he wakes up–rinse, repeat. That’s the floor of Harold, however tucked out of sight from folks’s view, is a personality who’s deceivingly introspective, usually documenting his life by means of scribbled photographs in a notepad, or expressing himself by means of playful theatrics when he is alone, like singing and performing operatically whereas mopping up a filter system. This is a aspect of the character solely we, the participant, get to see. As a personality, Harold is advanced, even when he would not solely perceive how. He makes an attempt to query and discover his curiosity and his personal existence inside the confines of a spaceship he was born and raised on, however he isn’t at all times able to understanding precisely what he is on the lookout for.Harold HalibutHarold Halibut, the sport, is very like its titular character: It’s charming and lovable on the floor for its distinctive handmade aesthetic and charmingly easy gameplay. But simply beneath that uncomplicated layer is a narrative that makes an attempt to ask questions on introspection and self-worth, even when the sport would not at all times really feel geared up to reply them or perceive its strongest fits.Harold Halibut does an unimaginable job in exploring its many themes and ideas by placing a magnifying glass on its setting. The FEDORA is a spaceship that was designed to go away Earth through the Cold War and set forth on a 200-year journey to hunt a brand new planet to reside on, however the brand new world it discovered was devoid of any landmass. With nowhere to go, the FEDORA crashes onto the planet, plunging its occupants into the watery depths, which they’ve realized to colonize. Meanwhile, Harold’s mentor and resident scientist, Mareaux, makes an attempt to discover a energy supply to launch the ship again into house to discover a extra appropriate planet to reside on.In the meantime, as Harold, you interweave by means of the lives of the FEDORA’s inhabitants, the ship’s politics, and its internal workings. It’s a monotonous course of that entails checking off Harold’s duties on his PDA-like gadget, as you progress by means of his day-to-day life within the quirky retro-future spaceship. But Harold’s life takes an abrupt flip after discovering a humanoid fish-like being has boarded the ship, creating a complete new perspective on the planet they’ve, in actual fact, been sharing all these years. It’s on this second that Harold’s seemingly monotonous life is turned on its head, inspiring curiosity in what lies past the one world he is ever recognized.Harold HalibutHarold Halibut is putting in its visuals as a result of it is solely handmade. Characters, articles of clothes, items of furnishings, teapots, mugs, floorboards, and all the pieces else was handmade in our actual world and digitally scanned into the 3D sport. Its visuals immediately distinguish Harold Halibut as one of the vital visually fascinating video games of the 12 months. But whereas it is easy to get swept up within the awe of its look, the strongest attribute of the sport is the world itself and the characters inside it.Harold Halibut is solely targeted on exploration, conversational decisions, and the occasional challenge-free minigame. At its core, Harold Halibut is targeted on the world and the characters that inhabit it, which, story apart, is the place the sport is at its greatest. While you might play as Harold, it is the characters you work together with who give the sport a way of intimacy and, over time, a sense of density that exhibits there’s truly so much going on–these are the sport’s greatest achievement.Across my 18 hours, I met almost two dozen characters, every with their very own story to unpack, and I cherished all of them. More than the invention of an alien species, or the urgency to discover a energy supply for the ship, my greatest motivation was to get to know every individual aboard the FEDORA. Whether it was the comical musings of the sports activities retailer proprietor Slippie, or the by-the-book Major who enforces the ship’s legal guidelines, every character is multifaceted, with deep personalities to study, discover, and oftentimes see challenged.While more often than not spent with these characters is totally non-obligatory, the sport’s most necessary and consequential moments, each hilarious and heart-wrenching, begin and finish with the residents of FEDORA. The conversations can really feel inconsequential within the grand scheme of the sport’s plot, however are invaluable to creating this handmade world really feel alive and lived in.With the abundance of characters additionally comes a determined must maintain monitor of them. Early in my time with the sport, earlier than I had develop into nicely acquainted with the forged of characters, I used to be usually confused with who was who and the place they have been situated. The sport’s lack of waypoints was to its profit, nonetheless, as this stored me engaged in utilizing the ship’s indicators to navigate its many sectors, but in addition higher study and keep in mind these characters, as I might with folks in actual life. However, these early levels additionally created pointless friction by inflicting me to bumble round and waste time. This may have been alleviated with the addition of an in-game glossary to remind me who’s who that would have existed in Harold’s PDA.Harold HalibutEvery character is as distinct of their appears to be like as they’re their views on life–even with the shared perspective of residing within the confines of a small colony underwater. It’s their tales that offers the FEDORA believability and lends the sport a prevailing coronary heart and soul that overshadows all the sport’s different plotlines. But its achievement of making a wealthy forged of characters additionally offers rise to struggles in correctly exploring them beneath the load of its different story ambitions.Aside from the ideas and emotions of its very broad forged of characters is an abundance of concepts and narratives driving the primary plot. These vary from unpacking a company’s ulterior motives, to a secret society lurking within the shadows, to the urgency to find an influence supply for the FEDORA. And whereas they’re little doubt obligatory to inform an overarching story, they really feel like concepts which might be too large for the dollhouse-sized nature of Harold Halibut.As Harold’s world aboard a spaceship begins to collide with the alien world he is been residing on, he makes associates with the planet’s inhabitants, that are generally known as the Flumuylum. The fish-like humanoids’ philosophies are a whole distinction to that of people, although additionally just about what you’d think about what it might be like if fish have been people: a species that merely floats alongside by means of life, current and observing, giving little to no that means to something. This mentality crashes head-on with Harold’s on a regular basis existence: a life that boils right down to routinely taking orders and doing what different folks anticipate of him, usually in service of the ship’s corporation-based ethos and in adherence to arbitrary guidelines like having a curfew or paying for its water tube transportation system. The duality between Harold’s and the Flumuylum’s lives are juxtaposed for a number of hours within the sport, till Harold is compelled right into a crash course in existentialism in direction of the latter half of the sport, inflicting him to query whether or not or not he was ever in charge of his personal life. The scene was a tonal whiplash as the sport made a tough flip to reply questions that it had solely simply begun to ask, and in doing so, felt extra clunky than enlightening.Harold’s abrupt journey of introspection is sandwiched on prime of and between the tales and ideologies of different characters, in addition to the sport’s overarching plots and conspiracies. No one thought or theme felt prefer it had the respiratory room it wanted or deserved, which implies they will really feel extra like fleeting considerations as a substitute of meals for thought. For instance, one scene hints at themes of the industrialization, air pollution, and consumption of animal merchandise by the human race, solely to by no means consult with it once more, and even arrange a satisfying throughline for its goal within the first place.In making an attempt to weave its characters, story, and themes collectively, I discovered its focus to develop into muddled. With such an emphasis on all its characters, and by making them an integral a part of the sport’s core expertise, Harold finally ends up being the one character that has a considerable narrative arc–he sees his world by means of the lens of a mere errand boy however has his world turned the wrong way up, making a perspective that offers his life extra that means by the top. But in spending the time to do that, the sport, in flip, leaves many threads for the opposite characters I had grown hooked up to feeling unfulfilled. By the time the climatic finish unfolds, I used to be much less within the conspiracies behind the occasions that transpired and extra targeted on the expansion of the characters.Harold Halibut is at its strongest when intimately exploring its characters, their internal workings, and their relationships with each other. But in making an attempt to construct in direction of a dramatic conclusion, lots of the hours spent fostering relationships with the characters took a backseat to plotlines that have been much less fascinating.To quote one of many sport’s personal characters, Buddy the mailman, “each person aboard this ship is a world their own.” In a narrative a few man trapped on a ship, who’s making an attempt to know himself higher, their lives and views must be an important tales to inform for Harold’s journey. Harold Halibut’s world and the people who inhabit it have been actually crafted by people who cared about him and his story. And whereas that story struggles beneath the load of its ambitions, the human touches on each a part of it are evident. Those are the center and soul of the sport, they usually imprinted on me too.