Harold Halibut (2024)

Harold Halibut could steal our hearts, but instead she shamelessly steals precious free time.

Overall, I enjoyed diving feet-first into this quirky and interesting narrative-driven mystery. While some may be deterred due to short attention spans or needing that quirk and fast-paced content this game will reward you for your time spent fishing for clues and unspooling the mystery. I'd encourage anyone looking to venture into this sub-aquatic adventure to devote some time to it allowing the game to grow. There's nothing out there at the moment to rival its quirky setting, it's out of the ordinary story and unique characters.

Harold Halibut is an adventure game that, although reminiscent of a walking simulator due to its rather skimpy and simplistic gameplay (without any really engaging mechanics), thanks to its unique and distinctive atmosphere and visual style manages to become a memorable title to say the least. It is certainly a strange and peculiar adventure that prioritizes storytelling and presents it through engaging dialogue and well-characterized characters. Despite the compassed pace, it is an intense and almost poetic experience that offers more than one food for thought on the meaning of life both in terms of the individual and as a collective, all enhanced by the wonderful aesthetics fully realized in stop-motion and justifying the ten years it took to conclude development.

Harold Halibut overstays its welcome like a free diver that descends too far. Its painfully boring gameplay consists of walking back and forth as the story unhurriedly transpires. Still, the oddball characters and sublime stop-motion aesthetics may hook a few gamers who are happy to wade in the shallows.

In the end, the spectacular presentation, fantastical world, and charming characters were enough to carry me through the game’s overly long and slow start, as well as look past the very limited aspects of its gameplay.