Harold Halibut Review

ign.com:

Almost all video games are painstakingly made by human hands, but Harold Halibut takes that idea so literally that you can almost spot the fingerprints of its creators on screen. This colourful, story-driven adventure features meticulously hand-sculpted characters that have been seated in detailed miniature sets, digitally scanned, and brilliantly brought to life in a 12-hour interactive stop-motion movie that we get to star in. Yet, like the oceanic alien world in which it takes place, Harold Halibut is deeper than it first appears. I came for the unconventional art style, but I stayed for the cast of quirky characters and a playful mystery to unravel that features plenty of warmth and humour beneath its striking stop-motion surface.

Set a couple of hundred years into the future, the events of Harold Halibut take place on the FEDORA, an ark-like spaceship that evacuated Earth during the peak of the Cold War in the 1970s. It later crash landed into the gloomy waters of a distant ocean planet, where it has remained ever since under the rule of the slightly suspect All Water Corporation. You strap on the work boots of the titular Harold Halibut, a hand-painted handyman who serves as a lab assistant in the ship’s science wing. The opening hours of the story are spent running menial daily tasks like cleaning filtration systems and scrubbing walls, before the unexpected arrival of an alien being draws Harold into a considerably more captivating quest.

With his amusing objections to the local water tube-based public transport system that flushes him from one place to another like a discarded tissue down a toilet, and his tendency to sing goofy songs while performing his daily duties, I found Harold to be a particularly charming and relatable hero. The fact that he was born on the FEDORA and its boundaries are the only world he’s ever known means that when Harold’s adventure eventually takes him beyond its man-made walls, his sense of awe at his uncharted alien surroundings