An heir to LucasArts? After 8 years in development, Harold Halibut is too good to be a 90s throwback

Part Wallace & Gromit, part Red Dwarf, there’s a magic to the way this Game Pass gem blends old and new.

Check out the video above for an in-depth appraisal of this very unique adventure, in which we ask the question: is it still possible for games to surprise us?

The high-tech world of game development has long had a fruitful creative partnership with the low-tech world of clay people being poked around all day in order to simulate movement. In the world of film, too, stop motion animation always seems to endure, despite the fact that it must be one of the hardest and most arduous ways of get moving images onto screens. There’s something gorgeously, lovably tactile about it which can’t quite be mimicked, and so it is seen as worth the extraordinary effort.

Harold Halibut is a deft blend of that hand-built aesthetic with modern video game animation that absolutely hits a sweet spot between the two, capturing the imperfect, organic essence of human-made art and imbuing it with life via motion capture and skilled cinematography. The result is something quite unlike anything I’ve played before, and a great marriage of art style and storytelling. The setting is a rattly old spaceship, submerged for centuries under an alien ocean, host to a remnant of human civilisation that is making the best of a bad situation. Of course it’s gnarled, and a bit wobbly, and tinged with a sense that none of the bulkheads quite fit together as well as they should.

Harold Halibut

PS4 , Xbox One , PC

Wishlisted - Our 10 Best Steam Next Fest Demos

Another Next Fest kicks off soon, but we’ve already done the digging for you.

Welcome to Wishlisted, a showcase of our favourite demos from Steam Next Fest: June 2024. Check the video above or watch on YouTube .

Finding the Best NextFest Demos is all about the joy of discovery, but with so many Steam Next Fest demos getting released in such a short amount of time, it can be bewildering. So we’ve decided to show you our ten Best Steam Next Fest games which we think deserve your attention. These are all upcoming Steam Next Fest games that we’re genuinely excited for, and that we think should play nicely on PC handhelds too!

This is just the start of our Next Fest coverage. This week we’ll be previewing loads of upcoming demos across the entire network - right here on VG247, of course, but also over on our sister sites Eurogamer and Rock Paper Shotgun. Bookmark our Wishlisted Steam Fest hub to stay in the loop. And this is well before Next Fest actually starts, so you, dear reader, get to bask for a solid fortnight celebrating all the wonderful new games that are just around the corner. Enjoy!