Harold Halibut

About

You play as Harold, a clumsy janitor on a sunken spaceship orbiting a water planet. Your days involve fixing broken machinery, chatting with quirky crewmates, and helping the ship’s lead scientist solve a 250-year-old mystery: can the ark ever leave this drowned world? The game blends slow-burn exploration with dry humor, as you wander retro-future halls, stick tools in suspicious machinery, and uncover layers of lore through environmental storytelling. A retro synth soundtrack and handcrafted art style (think paper-mache and yarn) give the ship a tactile, drifting-in-time feel. The game’s charm comes from its quiet weirdness. Characters have full voice acting but often say nothing of importance, forcing you to read between lines and malfunctioning holograms. Early reviews highlight its meditative pace and unexpected emotional beats, especially as Harold navigates what it means to belong. Available on PC, PS5, Xbox, and Mac since April 2024, it’s a short but dense experience, think 8-10 hours of meandering through a world where the biggest threat is existential boredom.

Storyline

It’s been 250 years since your home - an ark-like spaceship - fled an Earth on the verge of cold war to find a habitable planet on which to preserve the human race. You are Harold, a young lab assistant for the ship’s lead scientist, Jeanne Mareaux. While most of the ship’s inhabitants have reconciled themselves to a life lived aboard the sunken ship, Mareaux still works tirelessly to find a way for the ship to leave the planet and find a new, dryer home. But of course the weird, wonderful and diverse people of the Fedora keep Harold busy too. Until one fateful encounter plunges Harold into a new world that nobody could have guessed existed - and one that may hold the key to Mareaux’s re-launch plans. Join Harold as he explores a vibrant retro-future world, talks (with full voice acting) to its inhabitants, and occasionally goes hands on by sticking screwdrivers in things, operating complex machinery, and more in his quest to find the true meaning of ‘home’.