Harold Halibut has spent nearly eight years in development, but the gorgeous-looking stop-motion animated adventure will be released in early 2024.
Harold Halibut, the long-in-gestation stop-motion video game from German indie studio Slow Bros., will finally be released in early 2024.
Work on the game began in around 2016, and development has involved a painstaking process of building character models and sets by hand, then photographing and scanning them into the game. The results are stunning, if time consuming.
“Feels great to have a release window!” said the developers via Twitter yesterday, following the release date reveal. “Developing a unique game like Harold Halibut came with its own unique challenges, and we’re looking forward to having more to announce soon.”
Harold Halibut tells the story of the titular Harold, a young lab-assistant on an ark-like spaceship that has fled Earth in the search for a habitable planet. Long ago, the ship crashed into an alien ocean, and all efforts to relaunch it have failed – perhaps until now.
We must admit, we’re suckers for games created using traditional, hand-crafted techniques. Other recent or upcoming examples include Scarlet Deer Inn, a side-scrolling adventure with embroidered graphics, or Kong Orange’s stop-motion animated Vokabulantis. Then there’s Amanita Design, the Czech Republic-based studio that has spent the past 30 years crafting unique point-and-click adventures using everything from pen and ink to photographs to folded paper models. “I believe it creates a certain timeless quality that isn’t present in 3D or vector-based 2D graphics,” said studio founder Jakub Dvorský when we spoke to him back in 2021.
Harold Halibut was featured as part of the Xbox Games Showcase Extended livestream yesterday, where it was also revealed that it will be coming to Xbox and Game Pass. You can also wishlist the game on Steam here.
Read more: The Painstaking Beauty of Stop-Motion Videogames
Paint and click: Inside the unique adventures of Amanita Design
