Harold Halibut

Harold Halibut is an amazing wholesome game with an impressive art-style and story. The dedication to making this game by hand (modeled and recorded in stop motion I believe) is admirable, and the developers did a fantastic job.

As some others have said, the game is quite tedious with a lot of running back and forth to complete tasks or talk to people, of which can be pretty lengthy if you add it all up. That being said, at time of this review I have 25.7hrs on record and have just finished the game - however I did go through this game at quite a slow pace as I wanted to get all of the dialogues (and I probably had it paused occasionally for over 30 minutes).

On other positive notes, everyone you encounter in the game is authentic and it really sells the world as being lived-in, and the music is unique and matches the ambience the game gives off.

Having finished the story, it honestly reminds me a tiny bit of the 'uniqueness' that Hideo Kojima's games have (Death Stranding in this case), in that one of the focuses of the game for me was around the aspect of connecting with people. Harold himself is a lonely man with no real hopes or dreams, and his personality is just quite bland overall - but throughout the game he really grows on you, and you do start to see him developing and growing more as a person. While I can't directly relate to Harold, I still definitely felt some connection between myself and him.

There's two main negatives I have regarding the game, of which the last is a bit of a spoiler (no specifics):

1. The back and forth and traversing the different environments gets pretty tiresome - I also had a tendency to misclick on controller when moving to a different area and have to wait out a cutscene-like transition.
   
[*] POTENTIAL SPOILER : The ending... the fact that the ending isn't a choice and it gets made for the player is a bit of a killer to be honest. While I could agree to some extent with it, I would have been much happier if Harold had made a different choice.

All in all, I would highly recommend the game to anyone who enjoys an immersive story-telling experience and doesn't mind the slow pace of the game. I certainly enjoyed my time with the game and it was especially nice to play while I've been ill for the last week.

Not fast paced, very good story, pulls you in as you learn the characters, and your way around.
Nice to see the humans and aliens get along (so far).

good

People leaving negative reviews on this gem have ADHD

Very much way more story than game but an excellent and extremely fun story. Very British comedy, the craftsmanship behind the story, the sets and the characters is wonderful.

Harold, a bit of a head in the clouds maintenance man, is your MC. Explore his growing connections across the ship, his own existential coming to terms with his own desires versus what others expect of him coupled with a incredible ending and adventure.

I was really looking forward to "Harold Halibut," but unfortunately, it didn’t live up to my expectations. The gameplay feels slow and lacks the engaging elements I hoped for in a point-and-click adventure. Instead of being immersed in an exciting story, I found myself bored and wishing for more interaction.

The art style is interesting, but it can’t make up for the lack of compelling gameplay. Overall, I wouldn’t recommend it if you’re looking for a thrilling adventure experience.

one of the greats

Discount Disco Elysium I can actually understand. Story walky, lots of talky, little 'gameplay' perfection. Maybe I'm just getting old but this is really worth any sale price.

Encapsulating. 9/10

A visually artistic and beautifully unique game, but one with gameplay that utterly bored me to sleep and had to refund

I really tried to like this game, it is great looking at first glance, stop-motion like technique is well made, but ; the game features a main character which is dumb as a brick. Whenever an interesting conversation occurs - which is very rare in this game - Harold says he is bored and skips the conversation. Otherwise most of the dialogues feels like written by chatgpt or some ai. Endless and pointless conversations all-over the game.
Also the game design is unfortunately garbage , during the game you will always have to make rounds for poorly written quest lines. I.e. you should deliver some letters to the npcs in one quest, but you have to go back every time you deliver one single little letter because our dumb harold doesn't think he can carry more than one letter.
And while doing these reroutes there is a stupid tube system, which is necessary to change areas, while using these tubes you have to wait around 1 min. every time you use that tubes which you have to use excessively.
The game could have been so much better, it had the potential , the idea is fine but they served it poorly in all possible ways, it could be fun if it was a 1h long stop-motion movie , but as a game for 15+ hours it is just boring and repetitive.

Played the game through on Xbox, then I bought the game on Steam to support the developers and play again!

Harold Halibut is a slow-paced, but heavily story-rich game. A last-ditch effort to save humanity occurs and a spaceship, the Fedora I, is sent to a foreign planet in hopes of saving mankind. Unfortunately the ship crash lands and becomes stuck in the ocean. Time to figure out how to relaunch.

On the Fedora I holds many unique characters with incredibly different personalities. You grow to love every single one of them - seriously. Harold Halibut starts off pretty slow, allowing you to explore the play-space, and to get to know everybody.

The graphics are absolutely stunning! I read that the entire game (I believe) is modeled and recorded in stop-motion. The game has amazing voice acting throughout it's entirety as well. I find myself constantly doing some of their voices along with them. They're all very unique.

Please, if you want a one of a kind story game, play Harold Halibut! If you can't muster up the $35, it's on Game Pass!, but it's worth every penny. Absolutely no reason for you to not try it!


Negatives: (the only thing i think is a negative is a possible spoiler, but no specific details)

the ending choice is pretty disappointing in my opinion, and there is only one ending. I wish they would have gone another route. Oh well. Kind of spoiled it for me, but the entire game being 10/10 and a 2/10 ending doesn't really change anything for me, I still recommend everything about the game!

Eagerly waiting for Slow Bros. next release

Amazing piece of Art. The stop-motion animation ported in a 3D space, together with the amazing environments and even more beautiful lighting, makes this game unique and worth your time.

The storytelling is well done, and the characters have a specific sense of humor that makes every twist pretty funny to witness. Recommended if you like slow pace games with good visuals and an interesting plot.

I hope Harold is happy now.

If Wes Anderson made a sci fi drama/comedy this would be it , its the type of adventure game where the dialog is the most important part so talk and re talk to everybody and be careful not to go home to early to see all that you can.take your time to look at everything just appreciate the craftsmanship that went int making a game with handmade figures and props.really good job with voice acting and music too.

Amazing storytelling! Interestingly build a fictional world. The game presents some bugs, but they don't interfere with the gameplay

I love this game, for the most part that is. I wish there was a yes button, with caveats. Firstly, this is very much a visual novel type game. If you're not interested in a game where you're mainly walking around and talking to people, it's not your kind of game! And that's totally okay.

I really loved most of the conversations. There's interactions between characters that are so wonderful and charming, and really helped me the past few days. I've been very sick, so it was nice for me.

I honestly feel like the ending....kind of ruined it for me? I wish we had the ability to make a choice for Harold. ((Don't read below this if you haven't yet played/finished the game))

The ending didn't really align with how I was playing Harold- reading all the messages about how much people were concerned about him, meeting everyone before the launch, it made me excited for Harold to really step into his own. Even the walking sequence- it felt beautiful and bittersweet, but nice. The ending on the other hand....was so sad. Like not in a good way, in a 'why did I ever connect to all these people and make such meaningful relationships if the game was going to make the decision for me' bad.

I get it, as a fellow artist, you have a vision. But I still would have liked to have stayed with my human community.

So! Play the game, and like me....pretend the last ten minutes of the game doesn't exist. Still would recommend for a good weekend/dreary day game. But just be aware of that ending.

The artwork and voice acting/character writing is the only thing compelling me to recommend this game. I enjoy the minute conversations with the various characters but between them, it is like watching paint dry. I wish the moment to moment game play was remotely interesting. I am pushing through that to see what happens to good ole Harold, but if I have to spend 5 minutes crawling through a vent system again I am uninstalling.

I love and adore this game.
However, I don't think that it is a game for everyone.
It is a slow game, with a lot of running around, finding stuff.
It feels more like a book you can walk through than a "game".
I LOVE IT!

The game tells the story of a sad little man, who seems to suck at everything he does. He is pretty much a nobody at the beginning of the story.
I love the story of Harold. How a sad, lonely and uninspired guy becomes someone who knows who he is and what he wants form live.
I love the little storylines of the other characters, they help to make the world feel lived in.

The story is quite weird but at the same time very thoughtful.

You have to accept the weirdness of it all and you need to be open to the slow concept, then you can love the story as much as I do. If you don’t, you will get frustrated by the game.
However, if there is the slightest chance that you could be interested in the game, pleas try it.
Walk around the fedora, talk to everyone you come across and learn about their silly little lives. Follow Harold as he grows as a person and finally finds his passion, his will to live.
Warning: IT THAKES A WHILE. Pleas be patient with Harold, after all in the beginning he is simply a sad little man (that I have grown really found of).

Even if I don't usually play narrative games, as I tend to prefer point-and-click adventures, I decided to give it a try anyway.... and I don't regret it!

Really, is impossible not to see the work that has been put through this game. I liked the story, I liked the ambience. I can say that it even made me think about some aspects of life.

I found it too slow on some parts of some chapters, but I enjoyed it anyway.

Can't do anything but recommend it!

Great work!

Probably the best game made in recent years any genre, only game that does'nt come with a battle pass thankfully LOL.

Bubblefish!

Please, give this game a chance. This is one of the most beautiful, deep and artistic videogame adventures ever made. Its plot is naive and meaningful at the same time. Its artistic style is one of the best examples of stop-motion in the whole history of videogames, inspirational and pure. There might take place some speculations regards gameplay and monotony - I agree with that, but this exact moment when you feel like quitting - give this game a chance and it will pay off twice in the end. When people tell you "Watch it on YT" - give it a chance and buy it. It wil gift you experience you'll never get anywhere else. For developers I'd advise to add more mini-games in the middle of the game to dilute the routine (mini-games are quite tactile and make this world more palpable). Add more context to flumylym's everyday life, they seem like just standing there, not living. But all that is just a nit-picking. Score is fantastic! Give this game a chance and if you are disappointed - blame me because I'm repeating all those words of satisfaction and telling you again: please, give this game a chance.

very good

MAGNIFICENT!!

Slowly pulls us into the story but there isn't really gameplay. Not mad about it.
Went back to the beginning for a second run with almost half the achievements to still uncover.

This game is warm, visually interesting, at times bizarre, and unique. I think Harold Halibut might not appeal to everyone due to its slower pace, lack of action-y elements, and abundance of weird - but I truly enjoyed the experience. At times it felt more like playing with a miniature toy set than controlling a video game character; it felt more like walking through someone else's imagination than exploring a video game environment. I don't think this is the game for everyone, but if you appreciate small details in games and artfully crafted visuals while not minding a slower pace, I highly recommend this wonderfully strange piece of interactive art.

The passion of the creators shines through in many aspects of Harold Halibut. The visuals are beautiful, the music well chosen, the characters are well drawn and you are encouraged to care about them. The story has a nice arc and you see the changes in the main character and their relationships.

However, this is not really a game. At best it could be described as a walking simulator. Harold is given a task, which is usually walk to a location and talk to someone. The dialogue is really just cut scenes, with some very minor and non-impactful choices. There are a few mini-games (e.g. a tetris room packing mini-game), but they are not well designed and don't provide any challenge.

The game this most makes me think about is The Artful Escape, but in that game you do have some level of control over your character and the musical game sequences are more involved and interesting to play. Furthermore this is far too long, with too many long sequences of walking. It took me 3x longer to play through this than The Artful Escape, which is too long for a purely narrative experience.

I would recommend people who are interested in an emotional narrative experience play Harold Halibut. But if you need gameplay - I would avoid.

I really liked the story. The design of the characters was cool. Very chill game.

Gameplay: A simple, vvvvv slow-paced game, with some puzzles and dialogue choices to choose from. Fair warning to all, the game is really slow, and I almost gave up in the first chapter BUT stick it out - I found getting myself comfy, and cozy to help in combating the slowness of the game, placed me in a mindset of chill. The dialogue choices do not affect the outcome of the game or scene, so no alternative endings - game is linear. At times, I honestly hated some of the characters due to the way they spoke to Harold, soooo RUDE just because Harold is "just a handyman", wish that I could choose to say something snarky back but I admit, Harold can be quite oblivious @.@

Visuals: I love love love anything stop-motion and that was the main reason why I bought this game. Unfortunately, I do find that the 3D elements of stop-motion is lost in certain aspects of game and wonder if it is a worthy style to pursue in the context of a game. For eg, the characters appear flattened sometimes, which defeats the purpose of using stop-motions. HOWEVER, I was enthralled by the sets. They were so beautiful (like Agora Arcades and Utility District) and I wish it was bigger so that I can explore more (was desperately hoping to see the Art and (a functioning) Agriculture district, that would have been so neat!), but alas, the limits of stop-motion sets.

Achievements: If you are a completionist (like me), it will be good to spend some time looking through guides - wish I found out sooner to do this. Also, be sure to refer to a few to cross check reliability. One of the hardest achievements requires a complete notebook, so you will need to talk to the characters often to obtain these notes. The only achievement I did not manage to obtain is "Busybody", annoys the heck out of me T^T. It requires Harold to carry out certain activities across several chapters which made it difficult to go back to game saves at the specific chapters after finishing the game. I found out the achievements that are to be carried out all in one chapter were obtainable after finishing the game - so those are not as tricky.

Overall, I still love the game, but would try to get everything in one try as the pacing is sooo slow - HOLD the (square) button on your controller to sprint!! It is not for everyone, but give it a shot - you may like it!

I bought this game hoping the story would be really interesting. I discovered a game that makes watching grass grow seem like an interesting a hobby. From what I played, this is a game for woke, slowly paced, Sundance film enthusiasts. I don't mean that negatively: just trying to help those who have not played this yet decide if this game is for them. If those descriptors appeal to you, you should support the devs and buy this game.