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Harold Halibut (2024)

⛹🏼 J · 🎮 PS5 · ⏱️ 22h

Harold gazes at an alien swimming outside the window of an underwater spaceship. Portraits of the game’s eclectic cast surround Harold. The title of the game is set in white blocky hand lettering.Harold Halibut searching for answers in his mundane routine as an interplanetary janitor.

Harold Halibut is a day-dreaming maintenance worker employed by All Water, a corporate conglomerate managing the dwindling population of the shipwrecked FEDORA I spaceship. Decades ago, this ship crashed into the watery depths of an alien planet during a failed expedition to find a new Earth.

Harold sits on a bed in a cramped utility closet. He says to himself, “Hoo boy. What a day. Here’s hoping tomorrow is a bit more relaxed.”Someone still has to do the washing up in outer space.

A futuristic PDA featuring a screen full of deliberately inscrutable symbols next to lined notebook paper with crude pencil drawings of scenarios and characters from the game.Who needs a phone with a PDA like this?

Close up shot of Harold’s hand moving a slider on a control panel. Above the slider is a square screen displaying 2 overlapping red and blue waveforms. There are two sliders on the control panel, each of them controls one of the waveforms on the display.Everything is made by hand.

Distant shot of Harold standing with his hand on the wall of a pyramid-like structure inside a colorful alien cave. On the floor are pools of water roughly the size of bathtubs. On the triangular walls there are irregular organic white shapes on the blue and grey speckled stone.There are only a handful of locations in the game but they all stay with you.

Distant shot of the Agora Arcades plaza within the FEDORA I spaceship. This section of the crashed underwater spaceship functions as a mall and food court.Even in the depths of an alien ocean we will need a food court.

Distant shot of Harold standing amongst the games cast of characters during a dance party in the Social District of the FEDORA I. A disco ball illuminates a lobby filled with elementary school educational decor.Amazing interiors filled with a lovable cast of characters.

Medium shot of Cyrus, a botanist and physicist, placing a scientific slide transparency on a projector. As he looks at the diagram of an object escaping a planet’s orbit, he exclaims “Huh! Interesting.”Launch day is approaching.

Medium shot of Harold standing at the end of a hallway full of closed doors. The door immediately to his right stands ajar. Harold faces the wall at the end of the hallway, which has been painted in the style of an optical illusion to make the hallway seem to extend further towards a large painting of a fountain.Something is not quite right on this ship.

Distant shot of Harold and Cyrus standing in the botanical laboratory looking out the transparent walls towards a nearby diver grabbing at a piece of debris.This game is like a message in a bottle.

I loved this peek behind the scenes of how the game art, characters, and objects were created by hand and paintstakingly translated to the game.

This game is a must for fans of Anomalisa, Fired on Mars, Wallace and Gromit, or any point-and-click narrative adventure.

Tags
Games J
Author
Jonathan Splitlog
Date
2024-08-02
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