It’s been a long old wait for developer Slow Bros’ gorgeous stop-motion-style space adventure Harold Halibut – but now, some seven years after its initial reveal, an end is in almost sight, with its Xbox, PlayStation, and PC release set for “early” next year.
Harold Halibut tells the story of a young lab assistant (the Harold of the title) forced to live his life onboard the Fedora, a city sized spaceship still submerged beneath an alien ocean 250 years after it fled Earth to preserve the human race.
While some of its inhabitants have reconciled themselves to a life on the sunken ship, others still works tirelessly to find a way to leave the planet and reach a new, dryer home. Harold’s story lies somewhere between all that, told in absolutely sumptuous style, part fully voiced stop-motion movie, part narrative-driven adventure.
Harold Halibut was initially revealed back in 2016, and its long gestation isn’t all that surprising once you lay eyes on its stunning handcrafted world, built using a combination of intricate real-world sets and models combined with motion-capture animation within Unity.