Harold Halibut Review
A Deep Dive for Fool’s Gold
If you asked me a decade ago, “will anyone ever make an entirely stop-motion video game?” I would have shrugged and thought to myself, “I doubt it.” Yet, in 2024, Slow Bros gave us one of the first stop-motion video games — Harold Halibut.
Combining hand-made dioramas with interactive media, Harold Halibut creates a visual gaming experience like few others. It’s an outlandish combination that joins the most labor-intensive style of animation with a medium that barely manages to produce finished products — which may explain Harold Halibut’s 10-year development time. From the perspective of “how much time and effort will this take us?”, Harold Halibut’s art style is on the “far too much time” side of that spectrum. The resulting game is about as beautiful and odd as you’d expect. That said, though Harold Halibut succeeds in its charming visuals and quirky characters, it struggles with tech issues, a lack of interactivity, and a story that can’t quite carry the weight of its gameplay.
Harold Halibut marks Slow Bros’ first game release and one of few examples of stop-motion in video games — aside from some claymation styled models in Tarsier Studios’ title, Little Nightmares. You play as Harold, a janitor on the spaceship Fedora — an exploration vessel that crash landed on an alien planet and found itself sitting at the bottom of deep green sea. Drawing clear inspiration from Wes Andersen both visually and narratively, Harold Halibut’s story follows the Fedora’s mission to escape their ocean bed and Harold’s search for meaning along the way. Unfortunately, while not without highs, Harold Halibut fails to find the same rhythm or quick wit of the Wes Andersen films it seeks to mimic. It’s a narrative that never seems to find its sea leg, ebbing and flowing tonally with frustrating pacing throughout. Due to slow cuts between character dialogue and a clunky script, Harold Halibut’s character interactions often feel more awkward than quirky. On some characters, Captain Zoya — the Fedora’s ambitious but insecure skipper — for example, this awkwardness adds to the game’s charm, highlighting the uncomfortable yet sweet moments that arise from genuine human interaction. On others however, like Professor Mareaux — Harold’s boss and lead scientist onboard the Fedora, this tone falls flat and leaves interactions coming off as just plain rude. For the first few hours of the game, everyone is so downright mean to Harold that I had a hard time sitting through cut scenes!
Harold Halibut’s story is also consistently interrupted with sometimes lackluster side-content, including the infuriating task to “find something to do.” Considering how immensely difficult this game was to develop, I doubt any player would fault Harold Halibut with foregoing side content in favor of a concise story, yet its narrative is frequently paused to feature character interactions that don’t pertain to the story and often miss their punchlines. For instance, at one point Harold is given a task to ask the Fedora’s IT person to help one of the ship’s scientists fix the wifi. I proceeded to spend the next five minutes walking to meet the IT person, having them reject my request, then returning to the scientist, only to find out the problem had been resolved in my absence. Moments like these made Harold’s sluggish movement feel extra cumbersome and broke my motivation to pursue Harold Halibut’s additional side content. While some of the side quests were genuinely entertaining, I found Harold Halibut’s “hurry up and wait” pacing to be disruptive, resulting in an anti-climactic ending to its roughly 12-hour story.
Similar to some point-and-click and visual novel games, Harold Halibut’s gameplay loop is largely composed of exploring, chatting with fellow passengers, and performing basic fetch quests that lead to the next story cutscene. Where Harold Halibut fails to meet expectations is the lack of interactivity in its environments. In most visual novels, while you may not have much say over the story’s outcome, you at least have a plethora of items to interact with that work to flesh out the story or broader world.
Unfortunately, actions in Harold Halibut are reserved to a few repeatable tasks scattered around the Fedora and chatting with passersby. While stopping by the Fedora’s arcade or watching a claymation Italian soap opera in the ship lounge are enjoyable the first few times, they quickly become stale as the priority turns towards progressing the game’s story. More disappointing though was the lack of dialogue options, and the unimportance of those options, when talking with other Fedorans. Most important story beats were fully scripted, leaving me unmotivated to have extensive conversations with my fellow passengers. These limitations were undoubtedly a result of Harold Halibut’s stop-motion art style, but they made the game’s core gameplay feel outdated.
Unsurprisingly, Harold Halibut shines brightest in its visuals, environments, and overall world-building. During my first few hours with the game, I was mesmerized with the level of detail etched into every nook and cranny of the Fedora’s seven districts. The tidy hallways framed by matte gray walls and the neon shop lighting against the swampy ocean backdrop all gave me the sense of playing with an intricately designed, dystopian dollhouse. I never got bored of watching Harold get flushed down a drain when using the All Water Tube System. The flow of the water paired with Harold’s characteristically stiff movement made for a beautiful and hilarious contrast. The Fallout-esque destination menu, which you use to decide what district on the Fedora you’d like to travel to, has a quirky tactile quality, which made me enjoy navigating Harold Halibut’s UI far more than I do in other games.
With such lovingly designed environments, it is no surprise that the game’s character models are similarly charming. All Water’s CEO, Brenna Casselchop, is always impeccably dressed ready for business around the clock. Chris Tinnerbaum, the sole teacher onboard the Fedora, goes about his day donning luscious blonde hair and a crimson bathrobe. Each character is immediately recognizable and underlines the beautiful quirks of Harold Halibut’s stop-motion aesthetic.
My one qualm with Harold Halibut’s visuals arose when Harold leaves the Fedora. Without revealing too much, Harold is tasked with exploring an area outside the ship to help Professor Mareaux continue their mission of escaping the alien planet they’ve found themselves on. By this point in the game, I had grown accustomed to the Fedora’s intimate corridors, but I was excited to see what lay beyond the ship’s cold walls. Disappointingly, upon leaving the Fedora, Harold Halibut’s art style stretched itself too thin. The wide open space of environments outside the Fedora forced the developers to abandon the ship’s retro-future ambiance, leaving the level design feeling muddy and less thematically consistent than life on the ship. While Harold is delighted to be exploring an area outside the Fedora, the unappealing environment paired with frequent camera and lighting issues made me significantly less enthused about the adventure.
After finishing Harold Halibut’s campaign, dazzled by its visuals but frustrated with its gameplay and story, I was left with one question… “why is this a game?” This may come off as harsh but, genuinely, with visuals being the standout quality of Harold Halibut’s package, why didn’t Slow Bros make a short film? Similar to the game’s protagonist, Harold Halibut seems to struggle with its identity, never understanding what it means to “be a game.” That said, this question, and resulting identity conflict, could be more a product of Harold Halibut’s art style than the game itself.
Even with all its faults, Harold Halibut’s bold style and willingness to innovate should be awarded high praises. Slow Bros ventured into largely unknown territory and, unfortunately, didn’t immediately crack the code. It is not often we see such massive stylistic leaps in video games. In this spirit, I hope Harold Halibut lays the groundwork for stop-motion’s bright future in the video game medium.
