Harold Halibut captivates you with its charm and unique design

It doesn’t matter whether it’s Wallace and Gromit, The Nightmare Before Christmas or Isle of Dogs – I love stop-motion. This physical production technique lends movies that extra special charm, so it’s hardly surprising that Harold Halibut immediately caught my eye.

However, the adventure game, created by Cologne-based studio Slow Bros., only uses stop-motion indirectly. Although all the characters and scenes are handmade, they were digitised afterwards. Instead of painstakingly recreating scenes frame for frame by hand, the animations are created on a computer. Even so, this doesn’t detract from the style. Quite the opposite, in fact. Movements are smoother and more dynamic than on film, making them very well suited to a game. Visually, Harold Halibut is absolutely enchanting. Every character, every room, every table appears unique and tangible – because it is.

Stranded underwater

Harold Halibut is set 250 years in the future in a retro-futuristic world. The Fedora, a spaceship on a mission to find a home planet to replace the dying Earth, has crash-landed underwater somewhere in space. Most of the inhabitants soon resigned themselves to their fate and turned The Fedora into a small town. But not Jeanne Mareaux, the leading scientist on board. She’s determined to find a way to make the spaceship airworthy again and leave the planet.

As a player, you take on the role of Harold, her lethargic lab assistant. You go shuffling through the creaking corridors of the huge spaceship, helping the inhabitants along the way. Harold’s a loving but slightly introverted chap who can’t say no to anything, so you’re constantly being sent here, there and everywhere. You run errands, clean water filters and help analyse rocks in the laboratory. Apart from a handful of mini-games, these tasks are seriously mundane. I spend most of the time walking around at a snail’s pace, gabbing away to the ship’s inhabitants. Although I can move freely around the vessel, I often have to take the same routes over and over again. From the laboratory to Central Station, where I take a connection to the Arcades (a kind of shopping district) and back again. All to deliver a meaningless message, never encountering any exciting dialogue.

It’s not just the character that moves slowly (the «run button» scarcely deserves its name) – the pace of the story is sluggish too. You also need to use a sort of water pipe system to travel between the stations on The Fedora. Whenever you do, you hear an announcement like: «We hope you enjoy your All Water Tube System journey. We hope you travel with us again soon». All Water is the name of the company serving as The Fedora’s government. Depending on the mission I’m doing, I sometimes hear the phrase ten times within five minutes.

It’s worth sticking it out

The story doesn’t get exciting until you’re close to the end. I considered abandoning the game several times. But for some reason, my desire to explore the unusual world of Harold Halibut never quite left me. Thank goodness it didn’t, as the game gets increasingly better towards the end. This is down to both the unique graphic style that makes the various locations so worth seeing and pure charm. The quirky inhabitants are always up to something that makes me smile.

Take Chris, for example. A muscular, southern schoolteacher with blond locks, who mostly walks around in a colourful bathrobe. He enjoys racing with the geriatric but surprisingly sprightly postman. Warren, who can be found at his snack stand in the shopping district, dreams of the perfect sausage. With no meat available on The Fedora, he has to be extremely inventive. Onat, who constantly performs abstract theatre in a black and white striped mime outfit, strongly reminds me of the landlord in The Big Lebowski. If I’m not mistaken, he’s even accompanied by the same music. Then there’s the Lightkeepers – a secret society set on uncovering a possible conspiracy behind All Water. All these people make Fedora a lively place with a lot of character.

Even Harold grew on me over time, morphing from a lazy good-for-nothing into something slightly resembling a leader. If not before, then certainly when he discovers an alien fish in the water filter tank. He christens the leopard-patterned creature with its bubble-like cape «Weeoo», developing a close friendship with it. Weeoo’s carefree nature is the perfect contrast to Harold’s melancholy. Together they visit Weeoo’s home, the only place in the game where the graphics disappointed me. I expected the habitat of a strange alien fish to be more than just a cave that looked like it was designed by a 1970s hippie architect. Still, at least it makes the story finally pick up speed. Weeoo’s fellow creatures, known as the Flumylym, have a possible way of getting off the planet.

The main story isn’t the only driving force in Harold Halibut. You regularly get messages from friends and acquaintances via Harold’s pocket computer. These then lead you to side tasks that bump up your game time. Slow Bros. says you need 12 hours to complete the main story, 18 if you’re particularly curious. In my case, however, the credits rolled after just nine hours. I’m always in a hurry, though.

At this hasty pace, I helped Harry put up a new neon sign above his store so that he could rekindle his love for his wife. I also gave Sunny a helping hand in chasing away the sausage merchant so she could take his marketplace spot. Sure, these tasks often just consist of walking around and chatting, but they bring me closer to the world and its people. The dubbing is first-class – all of the voice actors do a terrific job. Unfortunately, the same can’t always be said about the dialogue. Sometimes it’s too long-winded and the characters ramble on about completely irrelevant things. Sometimes, if I want to skip the text, the scene continues but doesn’t have any sound. At times, dialogue overlaps. Hopefully this is something that’ll be patched up eventually.

Harold Halibut is surprisingly hardware hungry. I tested the PC version, and the fans were blasting away as if I were playing Cyberpunk 2077 in 8K. The detailed rendering and animations are evidently very demanding. On the other hand, it’s no big deal if the game’s only running at 60 fps. This is also the mode that the studio recommends for consoles.

Verdict: an atmospheric, if slightly sluggish adventure

At the end of the day, I have to say Harold Halibut’s a great game. The narrative threads come together in the final third of the game, and the story becomes much more varied and exciting. However, the game moves at a snail’s pace, especially in the first few hours. I think Slow Bros. took its studio’s name just a tad too literally in that respect. Although I enjoyed talking to the Fedora’s numerous quirky inhabitants, a lot of these conversations were absolutely meaningless. With Harold constantly being sent on pointless errands and moving as fast as a stranded halibut, I got a bit bored at times.

That being said, I can’t hold on to any hard feelings about the game. It has too much charm for that. I love the design with its handmade objects and figures. When the camera zooms out to reveal the underwater world, Harold Halibut looks especially fantastic. Not to mention the fact that the game has a perfectly fitting soundtrack. Tracks like «Im 80. Stockwerk» by Hildegard Knef turn a bog-standard submarine ride into a gloriously trippy experience.

Harold Halibut is an atmospheric adventure game with a lot of heart and a unique style. The pacing’s off, but it’d be fine if the game were cut down in the right places. Sluggishness aside, I’m glad I stuck it out to the end. I’d recommend you do the same.

Harold Halibut is available from 16 April on PC, PS5 and Xbox Series. The game was provided to me by Slow Bros.