Posted 11/2/2024
i really like point and click adventure games. i try to play as many that have themes and content that seem to be enjoyable to me. i played the monkey island games earlier this year, i played the darkside detective games, and also the puzzle agent games more recently. i wanted something new to play.
so here enters "the excavation of hob's barrow" which was released in 2022, a point and click adventure game that has horror themes, interesting pixel art, and comes with a "very positive" rating on steam. perfect thing to play during season.
upfront review: its just ok. it's good, even great in some areas, but for the majority of the game it is just really really ok. do i recommend that you play it yourself? no, actually. this one if you're really into it is best experienced through a lets player that doesn't talk during the video. dead serious.
the premise of the game is interesting enough: Thomasina Bateman is written to go to Bewley to go excavate Hob's Barrow, a local landmark. the townspeople are god-fearing, superstitious people, but Thomasina is determined to get to the truth.
Thomasina then learns that her father, who is basically been in a coma for the past 25 years, was a part of a previous excavation attempt 25 years ago. whatever "accident" he suffered to cause his state was a direct result of whatever happened at the barrow.
Thomasina also learns that goblins might be real?
anyway, spoilers, she basically reawakens a primordial god that was sleeping under the earth for who knows how long and the world is fucked as the old god is gathering worshipers again.
anyway.
this game has a really slow pace, even for a point and click game. the average "time to beat" on this game seems to be 7 hours and i clocked in just under 6. but also, by the final area of the game i was straight up just using a walkthrough because i was really just… done with what the game was doing and i was tired of it. not even in the way of putting it down and coming back later, no i was really bored and tired with the antics this game was throwing at me and i wanted it to be over.
it's just fine. like the entire game is voice acted, which is rare for any game, much less a point and click adventure game. the voice acting is pretty good. the game totes a simple pixel art style, but then jumps to rotoscoped very detailed pixel CG and animations occassionally. i think they were fine at best, bad at worst. they were never used effectively and if anything just makes things feel uncanny but that's always washed away by the next scene you partake in since they're always used in these lead-in situations to where you meet a character, have long conversations, or a flashback. like there's a reason airdorf used the rotoscoping as a part of the horror in FAITH, they were puncutation, the punchline, the ending rather than the beginning of something. these animated segments don't really add anything besides saying that "look at this".
and i'll lead into the "horror" aspect of it, this game is barely a horror game in any sense. there's maybe like only one incident outside of the barrow (that is already indicated to be in-between worlds or something) that could constitute horror but then the situation is glossed over and was just a smaller part of a character being delayed in meeting someone else. again, a lead in rather than The Punctuation.
and then talking to the parts of the game outside of the barrow, rolling around the village of Bewley, is fucking achingly SLOW. not even that, there were maybe only two NPC characters i actually liked talking to.
this is a digression but it is related i promise. there's a TV show that i do not like called Doc Martin. it's about a doctor who i think on the brink of losing his medical license because he develops hemophobia (the fear of blood) becomes the physician of a small port-side town. the entire first season (and much of the subsequent ones because there's a lot of seasons of this show) involve the antics of this very autistic coded man dealing with the antics of these townspeople that refuse to engage with Martin on his level. it's absolutely fucking infuriating to watch as these people mean-heartedly poke fun at his phobia or his autistic behavior because they chock it up to him being a city boy outsider and not just like. AN AUTISTIC MAN. my mom and grandma love this show so i was forced to watch it a lot when i lived at home and it felt so fucking BAD to watch that show and basically watch a town of people just fuck with this neurodivergent man because he was different.
there's nothing so bad in the excavation of hob's barrow with Thomasina, but the idea of the fish out of water in a small town and being treated differently because she's an outsider did invoke some of the same feelings i have about Doc Martin. that sense of English Scorn that these people show Thomasina made me really fucking mad when she's been nothing but personable as much as possible.
and then that leads into my next point, that there's a real sense of shifting agency that you have over the events of the game. there is only one ending, confirmed by the developers. however, the majority of the game you get to decide how you engage with the townsfolk, either telling them the truth about your intentions in Bewley, or lying to them. i lied only once during the game because the one time i did, IT DIDN'T FUCKING MATTER!!! I GOT SUSSED OUT IMMEDIATELY AS LYING!!!! like why the fuck would you give me the option if you were just going to say "nah, i know you're lying"!!! that sucks to feel happen, and since up until this point i had been truthful but i didn't feel like in this instance the character didn't need to know what i was doing.
\i'll admit that the game having these options of how to engage with characters, but then in the final scenes taking away their agency is interesting, but it needs to be reinforced by the actions that happen before that!! i barely lied in my game because it didn't feel like it would lead me anywhere good if i did!
on top of that, the choices are presented as just such, "tell a lie" "tell the truth" "[some third option]" with some internal message from Thomasina about what she should do, so it'll be like "Lie to him (He's a liability)" as the option.
and like i'll also say that it's not a bad thing that this game only has one ending, the narrative arc was leading to that conclusion most definetly! i'm not mad about that, what perturbs me is just how the illusion of choice is presented through the game and how it doesn't seem to have any bearing on how the story develops further. my friendship with Mr. Tillet seems pre-ordained in hindsight, even though i was genuinely trying to foster that relationship with that NPC because he was the only person in town that seemed like a normal fucking person (but also when you meet him, he does harass Thomasina into trying to get her to give him a kiss. he does apologize later). Maybe this was the only change and bearing i had on the final solution to the game, he does get brought up in the conclusion as having moved away from Bewley after all that happened.
the gameplay and puzzles are fine for the most part, but like i said earlier, i got so fucking tired of them by the time i got to the final area of the game. this game does suffer from the esoteric point and click type puzzle design though, where you have a bunch of stuff, need to go collect a bunch of other things, do things in a specific order or specification, and only if you just kind of went through all your available interactions at any given juncture you'd be able to figure out what to do next.
there is a fast travel option, but the game just moves so goddamn slow because of this style of puzzle design. the puzzle logic always feels like its halfway there, like you know EXACTLY what has to happen but because of the game's logic you're barred from accessing certain things until you do another 2 fetch quests or find the correct item or NPC to interact with and then you can get the thing you need to interact with the main plot.
the game is only 7ish hours long, which isn't that long, but like. the secret of monkey island is supposed to also be about that long, however you're encountering new scenery and people and things and interactions a lot so it doesn't feel that long. versus you basically have the majority of Bewley available to you up front and you're just waiting for certain things you've seen and noticed to be involved in the plot. it's annoying!!! it's super fucking annoying to see things and parts of scenery and have to wait until the game decides that you're allowed to interact with it or you're not stuck in a cutscene and have to walk past something that interests you.
and then that leads into my next point, this game's cutscenes and converstaions are also very long. i just started sewing after picking a dialogue option because i knew that these people would be talking for at least 2-5 minutes each time. when the voice line completes the next spoken line happens so you don't need to have your hand on the mouse, or you can just click through the dialogue but the autoskip happens regardless so there's a handful of lines that i didn't hear because i accidentally clicked the split second after a line was spoken and the new line appeared so it just skipped to the next line.
but there's so so much dialogue in this game. honestly it's for the best this game was entirely voice acted because i think i'd have even less patience for this game if i had to read through everything myself.
the final area of the game, under hob's barrow, is just a puzzle zone. i used a walkthrough fully for this part because you just go from one puzzle to the next in these four separate rooms and areas. the final "puzzle" is probably the most interesting because you just walk through a bunch of doors, but in between you retread a bunch of the flashbacks Thomasina has had over the course of the game, but there's something corrupted about it. this was probably the strongest part of the game and it's played and done in less than 10 minutes total probably.
and then this leads into my next point, this game's horror is not very good. the most "horror" you get are just some weird uncanny faces, some purple-tinged dream sequences, and a man tied by flowers to a sign pole. i wish there was more "horror" here, somehow playing up more of the uncanniness, the alienation from the town Thomasina experienced made manifest in some weird metaphoric stuff, less of things explained or talked about, etc. it didn't push the horror angle far enough in my opinion. even if it was kind of corny or weird, it would've still been cool to see how far it could go! i love pixel horror games even when they do some stupid things, and this game just filled my glass up a quarter and said "ok here" and im just supposed to be fine with it? no, not in this department.
sorry, this blog post is mostly me trying to get this shit off my chest because i spent 5.8 hours playing the excavation of hob's barrow and i need to just spill my disappointment with it. that's a good word, its not a bad game, its just an ok and pretty disappointing game.
i've been really busy this october so i haven't been able to play games a lot save for some smaller things or picking something out and hoping i really like it, and man. nothing i've played this month has really hit the feeling i want it to reach.
i did play little goody two shoes earlier this month and that was a lot of fun and actually appealed to my horror tastes. i watched a playthrough of mouthwashing and that game is absolutely incredible, not just from a horror standpoint, its just a really good game. i started nine sols recently and the first hour of that game broke all my expectations im excited to play more (when i have the time). oh also, i played the new demo for tenebris somnia and i really want to play that game when it comes out, it mixes pixel point and click and FMV and it does the thing i said, the video PUNCTUATES the horror and the uncanny rather than leading into something. but i gotta wait for that one to come out.
i've also just played a bunch of hidden object games but the saddest part about playing hidden object games is that when you find all the objects the game is over with! theres a lot of mental pleasure to be had in finding everything, but the bittersweetness of finding all the things and it being done.
the excavation of hob's barrow is just really ok. its so supremely ok. never been a more ok "horror" game. i just want a game to play that will leave me feeling a bit more than that, yknow?