One of the saddest casualties of the 90’s video gaming scene was the loss of the once prolific point and click adventure game. These puzzle-driven, often narrative heavy games began life as pure text adventures in the 80’s, growing into the more iconic two-dimensional backdrops.
There was a golden time when LucasArts (now Lucasfilm Games) reigned supreme, the Monkey Island series being the absolute jewel in the crown of the adventure game.
But then, as it does, technology advanced, and the first person shooter became king, leaving point and click adventure games to fade into obscurity.
Since then, there’s been a niche love for the genre, but none of the major developers have had any interest in producing them. Some have dabbled; Telltale’s The Walking Dead Game was popular, for example, but they’ve been few and far between.
So imagine my delight when a demo for an English folk horror point and click adventure game was teased.
Known originally as Incantamentum, it has since been renamed; The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow was developed by Cloak & Dagger games (themselves aficionados of the genre) and published by Wadjget Eye Games (a sturdy presence in the indie game scene
Speaking about the plot of games in this genre and style can be difficult, as the experience is the story in many cases, and if even one reader considers themselves a prospective buyer, I’d hate to ruin any of the surprises for them.
To broadly summarise, Hob’s Barrow, based in Victorian England, features the latest endeavour of archaeologist and barrow digger Thomasina Bateman (voiced by the ever capable Samantha Béart) as she attempts to locate and excavate the titular barrow in the rural town of Bewlay, located in the Yorkshire Moors, on the invitation of a mysterious gentleman who fails to show up at their designated meeting place.
From here, things spin out to the gradually more unusual and unsettling over the next few days as Thomasina attempts to manoeuvre around the often truculent locals of Bewlay in her search for the elusive (and apparently, feared) barrow.
The game is billed as folk horror, but the cosmic horror overlap is there as well, and becomes apparent the deeper into the narrative you delve.
This isn’t too surprising; Cloak & Dagger have previously put out a free, mini-adaptation of the H. P. Lovecraft story The Terrible Old Man, so their taste for cosmic horror is obvious. While the tone gets increasingly dark, there are moments of levity and humour to contrast.
The art style is enjoyable and nostalgic (though naturally these things are subjective), and very atmospheric; the vast bleakness of the Moors, and the all-enshrouding fog are there, as well as the more unusual locations which are, unfortunately, far too much a spoiler to speak about.
The character designs and backgrounds are era appropriate, and nothing obviously anachronistic jumped out at me.
Pleasingly, there are occasional cutscenes, one or two of which appear to have been rotoscoped, having that customary smooth animation.
As a protagonist, Thomasina Bateman has a credible motivation for doing what she does, travelling England to research barrows for a book, as well as more personal reasons for why she continues to engage with the plot after some of the more strange and unbelievable elements start to emerge.
The cast isn’t huge, but isn’t barebones either; it’d be odd if a tiny Yorkshire village had the population of a metropolis, and there are a good handful of memorable characters, of varying prominence to the plot; you only need look at the featured image for this article to see how taken I was with Herbert the local stray in all his fearsome glory, though the oddly bloodletting obsessed vicar (its curative properties are undeniable, apparently) made his impact as well.
Similarly, the sound design leaves nothing to be desired, and while there isn’t a huge soundtrack (there are 20 songs in game total), they’re used to good tonal effect, and many of them are unsettling. Environmental ambience is good as well, the sound of woodlands and the sound of sepulchral depths rendered with equal care.
One major change from playing the demo in October of 202, to the full release nearly a year later is that the game went from fully unvoiced to fully voiced, giving the Yorkshire accent a good airing, though Thomasina herself has the received pronunciation of the upper classes (except for in one instance of drunkenness).
If I was forced to find one critique of Hob’s Barrow, it’s that it’s too short; the average playtime is 6-8 hours, though at the price they’re charging for it they’re practically giving it away, so it’d be unreasonable to expect a 30 hour epic. And there’s something to be said for a narrative that lasts exactly as long as it needs to tell its story without massively overstaying its welcome.
The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow is on sale for PC via Steam or Good Old Games for the more than reasonable price of £11.39. A very strong recommendation of fans of slowburn, non-gory horror or fans of point and click adventures.
