Handmade stop-motion marvel Harold Halibut’s intriguing adventure launches in April

The inventive Harold Halibut, an adventure game leaning into the plasticine visuals of famous IPs like Wallace & Gromit, hits all major platforms in early April 2024, so clear your schedules.

When it was first revealed, Harold Halibut stunned me with its ingenious mix of stop-motion animation, adventure game mechanics, and a story that dives deep for a little soul-searching. The game looks like a labor of love and the story sounds like it’ll be as zany as the works that inspired it.

Harold Halibut cruises onto all major platforms next month

Developer Slow Bros revealed that Harold Halibut will be released for PC, PS5, and Xbox Series X/S on April 10, 2024, during the Future Games Show Spring Showcase. This leaves less than a month to wait until the most visually striking adventure game of the year so far is with us, and it’s one I’m going to be prioritizing as soon as I get my hands on it.

Over the course of the game’s story, players take on the role of Harold Halibut on a crashed spaceship. The city-sized ship is submerged in an alien ocean where everyone has to do their part, but Harold, bless him, feels like a spare part with no purpose. He’s a nice enough guy, and everyone gets on with him, but he’s always on the sidelines.

This all changes when Harold discovers an alien from the unfamiliar waters visits the ship. While not the best man for the job, Harold is handed the task of escorting the creature back to its world while attempting to avoid those who might seek to do it harm in the name of science.

Of course, this story will not only take you on a thrilling adventure around the sunken spaceship and out onto the alien planet, but it’ll also show Harold a lot about what home means to him. As a man who feels lost when surrounded by his own kind, he and the alien have much in common as outsiders in strange places.

I can already feel myself welling up at the mere thought that a game is going to teach me something about how I perceive my home and why that could change to make the world a more comforting place. For me, this game is visually stunning and much closer to art than interactive media. I just hope the story lives up to that when it’s finally here.