In the game Harold Halibut, I play as Harold, the handyman on board the Fedora. When it crash-landed during its mission, the spaceship Fedora, stayed in stasis for years, caught in the waters of an alien planet. It left Earth during the height of the cold war, and now, generations have passed. Hardly any of the inmates remember why they left their comfortable planet in the first place. As you can imagine, there is a very real feeling of cabin fever on board. It can’t help when a strange message from Earth throws them off the edge. They want to get out of this alien planet and rush back home — fast.
Harold is an ideal character to play here — we see the entire spaceship through his eyes. As a humble, carefree man in his twenties, people on the ship perceive him as a non-threat. A lackey they can send around to do their errands. That’s actually the whole game — Harold running around doing chores. Cleaning up store rooms, wiping graffiti off walls, transporting equipment. Kids see him as one of their own, he’s a simple and easy-going guy. The grown-ups talk down to him, and trust him with information because they don’t think he can do all that much with it. He listens, and mostly helps.
This much you can take for granted. If you introduce me to an indie game like this with cute characters like Harold, which can best be described as a ‘visual novel’, I will buy it. Reckless, sure, but they’re usually a good way to spend the time. These are walking simulators. No puzzles, no boss fights. I walk from one room to another in the spaceship, talking to people. When I am not sitting through a long dialogue cutscene, I am reading through pages of diaries or letters. The mystery and intrigue of the story is often enough to ignore the lack of a gameplay mechanic.
What’s more is that Harold Halibut also provides a truly unique visual experience. The developers spent 12 years making this game — creating elaborate clay models of all the characters, customizing dollhouse sized sets, filled with miniature items and it all shows. All of this is why I was a bit surprised when the experience of playing Harold Halibut didn’t work for me.
In the proverbial rulebook of games, there is an important one that Harold Halibut overlooks. It goes like this: “A game that relies on its narrative must never be too long. Three hours maybe. You could push it to 5 hours, but that’s it. A second more and you’ve lost the player’s attention”. And this game takes a very patient nine hours to tell its story.
Take, for example, the fun side mission with Buddy, the postman. Harold does Buddy a favour here, he sneakily reads letters, and then delivers them to the inmates of the Fedora. Through this mission, we learn a little more about their lives, and Harold adds up some karmic empathy points. But I was still screaming internally at the number of times I had to force Harold to jog back the same, overworked pathways to his room, carrying just one letter at a time.
What a waste of time! There were also just too many cutscenes. I died a little as characters slowly ambled through their conversations — with no way to speedily skim through these elaborate interactions and get the highlights. There was a tiny but annoying bit of lag between clicking on the interact button, and the characters actually having a conversation. I was soon exhausted with the map itself. Repeatedly walking along the same corridors, and nothing new to discover two hours in. Honestly, all of this would have been fine if it was a shorter game.
Which is why I have to say — Harold Halibut has its strong moments. I loved the scene where the music swells, as Harold has his life-changing encounter with an alien. I liked it when this indescribably surreal tetris-style sequence plays out as he dumps boxes into his bedroom. It’s heartwarming to watch Harold grow to a headstrong character who knows what he wants, from being just a dude who just does thankless favours for other people. I swear, the ending would have just made me tear up — if it weren’t such a long game.
If you are looking for a narrative game — you probably would enjoy Harold Halibut. You might just be a more patient person than I am and love the game for its truly good-vibes story and the lovely voice acting. You are in luck if you have the Xbox game pass — as it is free. The game is currently available for the PC, Xbox and PlayStation 5.
(Written by Anusha Ganapathy)
