Harold Halibut Combines Stop Motion With Adventure

CHIEF DESIGNER ONAT HEKIMOGLU AND ART DIRECTOR OLE TILLMANN TALK INSPIRATIONS AND ACHIEVING A HANDMADE AESTHETIC

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The word ‘handcrafted’ is somewhat of a misnomer in gaming. If we are to take its literal meaning – the act of an object physically being created by hand without machine – it’s a word that instantly conjures up tantalising artisanal food, intricate wooden furniture or perhaps delicately embroidered textiles. For quirky adventure Harold Halibut, we might be getting the closest we possibly can to a handcrafted videogame.

Made out of wood, metal and clay, as well as via a variety of 3D scanning techniques and Unity, indie German developers Slow Bros sought to create a weird and wonderful cinematic stopmotion game, featuring real built sets and puppet characters. In Harold Halibut, you play a janitor trying to help relaunch a spaceship stuck on a water planet, all while unearthing secrets.

In some ways, Harold Halibut evokes the eccentricity of Wes Anderson meshed with the nautical claustrophobia of BioShock. Though a lot of comparisons point to his stop-motion tales Isle Of Dogs and Fantastic Mr Fox, the inspiration is actually more diverse and comes from further afield, including obscure retrofuturistic Fifties/Sixties architecture. The idea itself, though, stemmed from similar childhood interests that the core founding team were reminiscing over. “The stop-motion element came naturally from all the stuff we looked at as kids, and continued to look at in film school,” says art director Ole Tillmann.