The Excavation of Hob's Barrow (2022)

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow makes me wish Grouvee allowed half stars. Because as a story, it's predictable and underwhelming. It also ditches folk horror for lovecraft vibes in the back third, which is a totally different set of themes that the game never reckons with (nor does it say much about the themes it started with).

As a series of puzzles, it's fun but you can't quite shake the feeling that the designers are desperately trying to keep you busy. The chain of fetch quests on day two in particular is endless.

The ways The Excavation truly succeeds are more aesthetic. The atmosphere of foreboding, the imagery of individual scares, the uncanny cutscene animation, the spooky 70s synth score.These things are all done incredibly well and I'm wondering, does it matter that a horror game is shallowly writen if it looks great and creeps me out when it tries to? Maybe not.

Maybe it's just enough to be fun and spooky even if there's not much substance. The vibes are too good not to recommend.

While only a published Wadjet Eye title, this folk horror point and click is supremely well crafted and haunting enough to be included in the pantheon of must-play spooky adventure games.

The player controls Thomasina Bateman, a Victorian antiquary who is invited to excavate a sinister mound in an isolated village. The interaction is fairly straightforward and traditional - examine objects, pick up items, converse, and use a cursor to do so. The nature of interaction is fairly simple, but puzzles feel reasonable and sensible instead of dumbed down and there'll be a few headscratchers here and there to keep the player busy without feeling too obtuse.

There are some dialogue options that branch villagers' reactions though the ending is all the same - the strength of Hob's Barrow's horror is in flashbacks, visions, and unsettlingly rendered pixel cutscenes. The runtime is fairly short, so things will ramp from idyllic to sinister to genuinely horrifying very quickly.

Visuals mix between dreary yet gorgeous moors and a sinister violet otherworldly-ness. Thomasina's character is unique in her strength and sensibility but she is layered and flawed enough to create a truly living being. Apart from the eerie opening most of the audio is in the ambience and sound design but the soundwork is excellently done and gets very creepy. Voice acting is very professional and helps to nail the Victorian period piece folk vibe this game gives off.

It's a wonder that Wadjet Eye only published this piece but Cloak and Dagger Games really proved themselves with this spooky, scary, tragic, and enrapturing little title that should spruce up a dark evening should you choose to find out...

The Excavation of Hob's Barrow caught my eye during a discussion on this site nearly a year back I think, and I immediately went and bought it because of what I had read. It's been a while since I played a point n click outside of the Ace Attorney series, so it took some adjusting, but this is an excellent love letter to the classics of the genre, even if it falls into some of the same traps that its predecessors did.

The town of Bewlay feels well realized and has a dense foreboding atmosphere that is further bolstered by the residents' distrust of strangers. The voice work is excellent across the board and really was the glowing highlight of the experience. The player character, Thomasina, is particularly well-acted. The game is loosely framed as a retelling of her tale by a few sparse instances of direct narration from her. The inflection of her voice during these is decidedly and purposefully much more monotone than is typical for her and also betrays subtle hints of regret. All in all, this game has some of my favorite voice acting in a video game.

The game also features a pixel art aesthetic that for some reason reminded me of Blasphemous. It could have more to do with the setting than the art, but I couldn't help but think of the more remote sections of Cvstodia as I walked around the little town. For the most part the game stays in this zoomed out third person perspective but occasionally will zoom in close to punctuate the story's more horrific moments. These typically felt well executed and often made my skin crawl, though I think of myself as having a strong stomach.

For me though, the game's second day, which comprises much of its middle section was a tad bland. You end up going from person to person in town helping each of them only to use the reward to help another and eventually get what Thomasina wants. These quests don't often feel like they push the story along and also feature a lot of tedious backtracking, which was slightly mitigated by the solid fast travel system. For the most part the puzzles could be figured out without a guide, which I appreciated, but there were one or two that didn't quite land right and I was forced to do some googling.

Hob's Barrow ends up as a really great slow-burn horror point and click adventure game that is perhaps too faithful to its predecessors by featuring the odd unintuitive puzzle solution. In general though, the game nails the landing with its excellent voice acting and memorable cast of characters. I'll certainly be thinking of it for a while to come.

This was no folklore. Sigh ..Had I known that this was going to be more like a Lovecraftian though I'm seeing more of a George R R. Martin ending, I would have passed it up I dislike games that railroad me into doing things especially During the final parts. Now im suppose to accept the main character, who is supposedly a well-educated, logical scientist. Nah bruh tooo much for my suspension of disbelief to handle. But I'll give the game this. it had great puzzles and atmosphere. The tension was great. It was done absolutely wonderful, but that ending killed it for me. The cult was real for sure but I think mostly at play was a mix of the hallucinogens emotions and psychological for the murdering.

So while I loved 2/3 of the game, I hate cosmic horror. This was not folklore. 3.5⭐

"Excavation of Hob's Barrow" is a spooky adventure game that feels like classics such as Shadow of the Comet and The Last Door.

You play as Thomasina, a barrow expert, invited to a remote village in the UK to check out a weird burial site. The game has a cool feature where you can choose how to talk to people, being nice or not.

It looks different from old adventure games because the graphics are more detailed and modern. Despite that, it's still easy to play because it gives you hints when you need them. Even the tough parts, like figuring out passwords, are made easier with clues.

The game's story is eerie, but it doesn't try to scare you too much. It's about Thomasina finding out her dad, who's been in a coma for 25 years, was involved with the barrow before. She's tricked into thinking she can wake him up by opening the barrow, but it's all a plot by villagers with a dark plan. The voice acting is great, making the story even more gripping.

I chose The Excavation of Hob's Barrow as my first scary game of 2024 to ease myself in. As @kensho noted in their recommendation, Hob's Borrow is horror with low stakes and I really appreciated that.

The story was delightful, the writing and voice acting were better than they had any reason to be, and I grew to love the visual style.

I was thinking to thing of a Scary Scale I could use for this and upcoming games here is what I came up with:

1. Kinda Spooky
2. Oooh, That's Creepy
3. A Little Scary
4. A Lot Scary
5. 2Scary4Peter

I think this one clearly falls into 2, Oooh, That's Creepy. The art style, physical distance from the character and scary things, and relatively few jump scares made this game very approachable for a scaredy cat like me.

I loved this game in almost every possible. It starts off on just the right foot and gets better as it moves along. The voice acting is very well done. The slow burn of tension and horror is managed perfectly. The characters all feel very alive and real. Basically, this is well-done horror movie with interactive features and puzzle-solving.

As for the puzzles, there aren't too many moon logic ones. A few times, especially at the end, I had to consult a low spoiler walkthrough for hints but generally, you had all of the information you need to solve a puzzle at your fingertips.

I don't want to spoil anything by discussing the ending but I'll just say I put it down quite satisfied. I wouldn't put it in my top 10 or anything and I doubt I'll replay it but I can confidently give it 5 stars and a recommendation.

It worked perfectly on my Steam Deck and the cloud saves meant I could always play it on my PC with no problem if that was more convenient. The Steam Deck screen is exactly the right size for this game.

Just finished this. It plays really well and really suits play on the Steam Deck (I don't think I would have bothered with it on an actual desktop).

Overall I quite enjoyed it. It's quite simple really, a bit of a point and click puzzle adventure crossed with a bit of click through to continue the narrative, ie nothing too complex. I thought the voice acting was superb, and the story reminded of 70's-80"s Horror movies set in rural England (although the plot and ending ended up being semi-predictable).

Where do I begin. This game is nearly perfect.

The atmosphere is incredible, the art style and palette are captivating and memorable, painting a muted fog-filled landscape in a small village.This contrasts with scenes or psychedelic body horror that are equally mesmerizing.

The story, dialogue and voice acting are also jaw-dropping. It is truly an edge-of-your seat game, with each new chapter growing in anticipation. Every character is a delight to exhaust their dialogue trees. They have such a rich character and breathe life into the artwork.

The puzzles are also top notch. Logical, challenging, and fun. It always feels fair and just contributes to opening up the world.

So yeah, I recommend going in blind. If you’ve ever enjoyed a spooky movie or a wadjet eye type-game, don’t hesitate. It is my favorite game they’ve ever published.

I didn't realize Wadjet Eye was producing this until it released yesterday. Despite knowing nothing about Cloak and Dagger Games, I picked it up immediately and put the other games I was playing on hold. That was, of course, the correct choice.

I wanted to write a well-crafted essay about why I like Hob's Barrow, but I'm just not in the right mindspace for it right now. I'm just going to dive in.

Frankly, the game has a fairly weak central narrative. It has the "Lovecraftian" tag on Steam, so I expected as much. I also expected that the game would have wonderful voice acting given Wadjet Eye produced the game, and I was correct there as well. The quality of the world building, characterization, pixel art, story composition and direction, and general ability to create mood all took me by surprise, though, by being a notch above the high quality I was expecting. I really enjoyed getting to know the citizens of Bewley and slowly coming to understand some of the odd behaviors they exhibited at times. I was also particularly impressed by the narrative direction -- the inserts of narration from the main character's future perspective, animated pixel-art scenes, and flashbacks to punctuate the events unfolding via normal gameplay were absolutely on point.

It's great. You should play it.

I love folk horror. From The Wicker Man to The Witch and Midsommar and this 'point & click' game was a real treat. It has a really good story that's even inspired on real gnostic mysticism.

Loved the atmosphere, voice acting and pixel art. But I have to say that this is a really traditional and risk-adverse game. The puzzles are not too hard and a couple that resisted me were easily dispatched by 'brute force'. I also think that its themes about the clashing of religion, old beliefs and science had more potential and it fell in a couple of cliches.

You can read my full review (in spanish) in GamerFocus.

Look at that grey sky. British af.