I didn't realize Wadjet Eye was producing this until it released yesterday. Despite knowing nothing about Cloak and Dagger Games, I picked it up immediately and put the other games I was playing on hold. That was, of course, the correct choice.

I wanted to write a well-crafted essay about why I like Hob's Barrow, but I'm just not in the right mindspace for it right now. I'm just going to dive in.

Frankly, the game has a fairly weak central narrative. It has the "Lovecraftian" tag on Steam, so I expected as much. I also expected that the game would have wonderful voice acting given Wadjet Eye produced the game, and I was correct there as well. The quality of the world building, characterization, pixel art, story composition and direction, and general ability to create mood all took me by surprise, though, by being a notch above the high quality I was expecting. I really enjoyed getting to know the citizens of Bewley and slowly coming to understand some of the odd behaviors they exhibited at times. I was also particularly impressed by the narrative direction -- the inserts of narration from the main character's future perspective, animated pixel-art scenes, and flashbacks to punctuate the events unfolding via normal gameplay were absolutely on point.

It's great. You should play it.

The atmosphere of the game is (very fairly) praised for being rich and unsettling, but it's really the audio that really sold me on Hob's Barrow. The voice acting is really strong throughout, and the soundtrack feels dense and at times ominous and truly fits the tone the game is going for.

The third act of the game doesn't quite match the first two, but that's likely a result of the well-written script and dialogue taking a backseat to puzzles which are fine - it feels like a different experience than the rest of the game which isn't necessarily bad, just a big jarring. Still, that change can't detract from the overall package and marks another great entry into Wadjet Eye's publishing library.

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow follows the footsteps of Thomasina Bateman, an archeologist from London who specializes in barrows, which, she'll explain, are a type of tumuli. After receiving a letter from a Mr. Leonard Shoulder telling of a most unusual barrow in the outskirts of the city of Bewlay, she takes the train there to investigate and, hopefully, excavate the place and uncover its secrets. The inhabitants are quick to tell her to turn back, warning that nothing good will come out of this excavation, warnings that Thomasina, ever the rationalist, ignores and presses on.

Before jumping into the game, I read a single review on it: that by Christian Donlan on Eurogamer. Aside from a strong sentiment that the game is best enjoyed as blind as possible, they mentioned how it would linger on their minds for hours after the credits roll. Having now played it myself, I agree on both counts: first, Hob's Barrow is something of a narrative puzzle, best experienced without being aware of how it's constructed, so if you're a fan of psychological horror and/or point-n'-clicks, consider just jumping in blind.

In fact, if you are a fan of horror games, the second point should come at no surprise: this is a story that's built to eat away at its spectator with the many gaps in its events and the insecurities it instills. In that sense, the game has definitely escaped its intended bubble, as many of the complaints leveraged at it from players boil down to "game vague and ending bad", which are baffling takes. This is a work that presents very specific themes, under a particular type of framing, and that is also going for a very well-known style of horror, and a lot of the players coming out dissatisfied are doing so due to refusing to engage with any of those things in more than a surface level.

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow deserves to be given more credit than that: it's a beautifully created game. Every scene is meticulously crafted, every narrative decision is deliberate and purposeful. The town of Bewlay is surrounded by an unnerving atmosphere reinforced by both its eerie sound design and its visuals, the latter shifting between a bread-and-butter pixel art style and twisting, uncanny rotoscoped animations. It also enjoys fantastic voice acting, of a quality and extent that is hard to find, if not unheard of, in an indie game in this price range.

One could say it's much easier to find fault in the mechanical aspects of The Excavation of Hob's Barrow than in its artistic choices, but even then, it's no trivial task. The typical point-'n-click puzzles fit neatly into the setting and escalate alongside the narrative, never getting in the way, and being almost entirely free of the famed Moon Logic that often plagues its genre. The UI is also modern, with interactions and items working in a streamlined fashion, a to-do list helpfully explaining the next goal -- great for hopping in and out -- and a map function that makes exploring Bewlay much faster.

Thomasina's adventure is just, overall, a fantastic experience, a hidden gem I hope to see get more recognition.

i wanted to like this more than i actually did. My main issue with it is the disconnect i felt with the protagonist after a certain point.
Stories where a character becomes obsessed with something, possibly influenced by some dark force from that something, slowly becoming insane, depend a lot on how this process is told, on how gradual and bit by bit this crash in reality is, and this is where i get a bit annoyed with Hob's Barrow. It just didn't feel like this character was ever reaching a breaking point, sure, she kept making stupid decisions, but because of the acting and the writing, they felt more like dumb mistakes, and not the red flags of someone becoming more insane.
It's a weird nitpick, i know, but the madness of obsession is the whole point of these types of stories. The gradual thinning of the borders of reality, madness and the supernatural should be a slow build up, but a build up still. Meanwhile we have our protagonist in an underground graveyard with magic plants and goats made of shadows, but acting calmly and chill (till the last cutscene at least). Quite a fumble for a folk horror that seemed so cool

This game is currently in the Humble Choice for April 2024, and this is part of my coverage of the bundle. If you are interested in the game and it's before May 7th, 2024, consider picking up the game as part of the current monthly bundle.

A mystery in a cozy British town.

The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow has players arriving at a little town in England with a ton of marshes and barrows. The player is trying to find the person who summoned them there and instead meets a lot of colorful characters at the local pub. If you’ve played any of the Blackwell games, this is by the same company, Wadjet Eye Games. The voice acting is extremely well done and elevates the game quite a bit.

However the game does try to push the envelope with its graphics at times and honestly, I think it fails to nail what it is attempting. It feels almost like it’s not going far enough but also goes too far. The story is a bit slow so far, and while the characters are good, and there’s been a couple of simple puzzles, one of them is an item you might miss if you didn’t think to pick it up, and the other was more of a “what can I do” rather than solving an obvious puzzle.

Pick this up if you like the Blackwell games. I assume it’s going to be paranormal and spooky at some point, but also the writing so far has been really good though I’ve yet to get started on the main mystery.


If you enjoyed this review or want to know what I think of other games in the bundle, check out the full review on or subscribe to my Youtube channel: https://youtu.be/8q4m_yRP5xw

if you're looking for a folk horror adventure to play through this season, you probably couldn't do much better. just really well constructed in all the genre nuts & bolts as you'd expect from wadjet eye: fun puzzles (not too easy, not too obscure), solid voice acting, solid art style (with some very memorable animated perspective shots!), near perfect pacing. setting is just extensive and moody enough to capture that spooky, dreary deep-rural town atmosphere (always overcast, frequently rainy). don't think i'd rank it above unavowed or the blackwell epiphany but its not far behind.

I don't like to say anything bad about indie games, but this was kinda bad.

It's a point-and-click game with very Lovecraftian influence. So Lovecraftian, that effectively nothing happens in the story until the very end, which is predictable and disappointing, albeit the best scene in the game.
It reminds me of Darkseed somewhat - a fairly middling-looking game intersperced with close-up animations, which, unfotunately, were mostly spoiled in the trailer. And of course H. R. Giger didn't design anything here, unlike with Darkseed.

About a third of the game is a fetchquest that could be cut with no issue and is clearly there to pad out the game.

Despite the fact that your protagonist appears smart no amount of choices will save them from fumbling down the dumbest path by the end.

The puzzles are either dumb or require outside knowledge, which is baffling. None of it is incredibly niche, but the game expects you to know some greek alphabet and a few latin words.

Truly a Lovecraftian game in that it's boring as hell. At least the black man wasn't demonic.

I love all these retro-style point ‘n’ click adventures that keep popping up everywhere recently, it feels like re-living my childhood with them. I’ve had my eye on this one for a while, too, and luckily, I wasn’t disappointed at all.

You play as a young brunette who comes from a privileged British family, and decides to follow in her father’s footsteps to become a famous archaeologist, but meets unexpected horrors that she needs to overcome. No, no, her name is not Lara Croft, and believe me, this is where all the similarities with the Tomb Raider franchise end! Instead of fighting your way through countless enemies, you need to solve puzzles – and let me tell you, some of them will be quite challenging even for adventure game veterans (I should know, I consider myself one).

I loved the beautiful pixel art graphics, the music, the voice acting… so everything, basically. Of course, probably the most important element of this genre is the story, but I wouldn’t want to give too much away about it, so let’s just say that, in my opinion, they’ve managed to create the perfect balance of humour, drama, mystery and horror with a spot-on atmosphere to boot. My only complaint is that they leave us with too many loose ends (or they weren’t loose at all, maybe I just didn’t pay close attention, I’m not sure), so I would really love a sequel where we get at least some of the answers. And it wouldn’t hurt to make that one a bit longer, either.

Anyway, highly recommended for adventure fans!

The problem with Hob's Barrow is that it doesn't know when to get to the point. It builds suspense successfully, but then fails to build to anything meaningful until the closing hour or so of the game.

Inevitably, this means the ending is disappointing, because it tries to cram too much "stuff happening" into too small a space.

Combined with far too few puzzles spread out over too long a running time, this means Hob's Barrow is a pleasant enough diversion while it lasts, but it can't sustain itself and won't stick long in the memory afterwards.