Handmade adventure game Harold Halibut got another trailer that highlights its inimitable art style at the Future Games Show.
Everything in Harold Halibut, an adventure game set in a crashed spaceship the size of a city, has been made by hand in real life and then scanned into the game. By combining this distinct miniaturesque, stop-motion aesthetic with motion capture, the team at Slow Bros has managed to create one of the most striking and labor-intensive art styles in recent memory.
There's more to do than just gawk at the sheer effort that went into everything, mind you. Our main character, Harold, is a scientist on an "ark-like" ship which crashed on an ocean planet while searching for a new home for humanity among the stars. While many residents are content to live out their lives on the enormous and remarkably varied ship, Harold and the lead scientist he follows are still looking for a way to resume their starside journey and give humanity a permanent place to live. Judging from the events of the trailer, a chance encounter with an alien race gives him just the nudge he needs to continue his search.
"It was very important for us to not only focus on an exciting main storyline, but to create a world full of interesting events and meaningful encounters," Slow Bros says. "The dialogues don't only help you progress in the main story, but also help you get to know more about the many characters that inhabit our world."
Harold Halibut is a narrative-driven experience with some old-school adventure game vibes, but it involves more than pointing and clicking. The newest trailer showed off a variety of minigames, challenges, and interfaces – all described as "playful interactions" rather than head-scratchingly difficult puzzles. You can keep track of your main and side tasks in a handy, almost Pip Boy-esque journal, which ought to come in handy given how many different characters we'll meet.
Harold Halibut is "coming soonish" to PC, PS5, PS4, Xbox Series X, Xbox Series S, and Xbox One.
