I really loved the way this looked - beautifully crafted stop-motion environments and characters and the whole game had a very strong Wes Anderson-influence that I found very appealing and Harold is a very likeable and sweet protagonist.

However, as someone who enjoys slower-paced games, I found Harold Halibut to be too slow-paced even for me, and found myself really struggling with whether I wanted to continue. Gameplay boils down to slowly running between locations and watching cutscenes, which are nicely performed and animated, but I did not find the story engaging enough to keep me interested in completing this.

The dampest of squibs.

I can’t speak highly enough of the exceptional claymation graphics on display here. They are beautiful to behold and as a concept for better games they are proof positive of the unique impact of such a style. In almost every other aspect however Harold Halibut is unfortunately woeful.

It’s just not a videogame in any meaningful sense. This is an interactive animation, and even then I mean that in the most limited way. There isn’t a single puzzle or narrative choice of any significance in this game. At least walking simulators have deeply engaging worlds full of things to interact with. They also understand that when the pace is slow you have to (a) keep the game relatively short and (b) allow for passive narration that continues as you progress. Harold Halibut makes you engage in fixed place conversations with very few dialogue choices that go on forever and by all accounts this game is 12 hours long. I genuinely cannot describe how many absolutely empty exchanges you have with largely uninteresting characters throughout that time.

You can tell the developers think this story is incredibly witty and quirky, but it really isn’t. I watched more curious, risky, and engaging programmes as a child on national broadcasters than this. Perhaps there’s some incredible twist I will unfortunately miss out on but I simply could not go on any longer. I gave up after the 25th time of being asked to slowly jog back to the same area I had just come from to carry out a menial conversation with very little wit or interest. I just could not do it again. In one objective you must deliver some letters, and after each letter you must go back to your bedroom to get the next one. Why can I not simply carry them all at once? Why do I have to ‘go to bed’ every night to progress? Why must I use a water tube transportation system that often requires me to go through a central hub, so in effect I’m going through this process twice just to get to my destination? None of this is fun or interesting in any way. If you want to make people do busy work there has to be some sort of narrative or gameplay reward - at least some exposition that isn’t just the same deeply uninteresting dialogue.

I’m sorry Harold, you seem like a nice fellow, but could you occasionally say or do anything other than sound confused? A big problem with having a man who is essentially stupid as the main character is that everyone you meet strikes you as having the advantage over Harold, which in turn just makes you feel entirely passive. This would work better if the game was particularly funny but it simply isn’t and I say that as a Brit who enjoys understated jokes and awkwardness.

Having thrown the towel in means that Harold Halibut becomes the only adventure game I have simply refused to finish, and I have played a lot of bad adventure games.

I think that says it all.

I wanted to love this so much. The world is beautifully realized, the characters are fun with their own quirks, and the hand-crafted claymation art style is one of the most breathtaking I've seen in a video game. But it's such a slog to actually play that all the good elements fade away to time marching on, you getting older and then realizing it's only been 15 minutes. There's just so little gameplay here and it all moves so purposely slow that it sucks any sense of joy or wonder the rest of the game may have filled you with. This is essentially a walking simulator which is fine, those games have their place but the best ones move, Harold Halibut crawls. You slowly walk from one area to the next, press the interact button on things and that's it. And the game is 10 hours. Once I start checking the time while I'm playing a game it means it's lost me and Harold Halibut lost me fairly quickly but it felt much longer.

Harold Halibut is a beautiful game that needs some serious investment from the player. Not because it's hard but because it's slow, extremely slow. The writing is almost clinical and that's not a bad thing. You get to live on this underwater station, talking with everyone about the smallest things, learning about everyone and the station in great detail. This makes for pacing that's incredibly slow. For a long time nothing seems to really happen. But when it hits you at the end, it hits hard because of all the time you invested, because you know so much about these characters.
Plus the look is just gorgeous. You can actually tell that all character models and environments are handcrafted and scanned in. You see all the little touches and even the small little, human mistakes when crafting all this from hand, which simply makes it charming. The presentation is even further improved by the atmospheric music. The game is often quiet but it knows exactly how and when to use one of its original and licensed songs, elevating great scenes to perfection.