The Excavation of Hob's Barrow

I'm not saying anything so as not to spoil the surprise, but that ending... Great job Cloak and Dagger Games & Wadjet Eye Games ! Chapeau!

Those were my first words when I saw this game. I'm a lifelong fan of anything folklore and if it's horror and deals with the occult and black magic, then I'm even more sold. To add to this - I love retro gaming, retro graphics, retro adventure games... There's no point in saying more, you get it. This game caters to the specific audience and my point is, that I tick all of the boxes. So I'm more than biased in my judgement. The Excavation of Hob's Barrow draws heavily from the things folk horror aficionados love the most - niche 70s movies, gothic novels and folk tales. Our heroine comes to the sleepy English village to do the titular excavation and as you can guess, she discovers much more than that. The said village is made amazingly! Confused at first, you quickly learn the land, meet the locals who aren't really friendly at first and unravel the mystery of the place. Voice acting and lines are so so well done. You really feel like being in a small village, not even because of what those villagers are saying but HOW they are saying it by details like dialect and specific phrases. I gotta say, if you are feeling like this game is your jam, it probably is. As I said, specific audience. If you are this audience, this will not disappoint you. I found some flaws - last day is very rushed in my opinion, it's really jarring comparing to the rather slow earlier game. I get the culmination effect... this wasn't it. It's also a short experience, pretty easy. Hard to get stuck on something, things are pretty logical. That is, logical for a game that is dealing with occult. The ending might be a bit underwhelming if you're building some kind of huge payoff in your mind. I would say it's still pretty good, considering the framing of the story you kind of expect where it might go. Anyway, this is my only review so you can guess it: highly recommended, loved every minute. Go play it.

Starts slow but soon evolves into a game with plenty of lovecraftian vibes, a little classic Sherlock Homes in here too. A pretty unique and interesting story overall, great voice acting and logical puzzles. if there's anything holding the game back it's probably the low resolution and lack of multiple endings. A few unresolved threads as well (The Fair Folk?? Violin girl??). I think the team should start right away on an "enhanced version", double the resolution, more detail and two more endings depending on your choices. This could potentially be a real timeless adventure game classic that goes on to sell +100k copies over ten years.

First of all: What really amazed me about this title was the atmosphere, the feelings of dread and isolation the game is able to convey through very simple means and which are consistent throughout the experience. It's a dark,rather serious point and click adventure, which gets really..dark and supernatural as it goes along. The puzzles overall are for the most part simple, sometimes challenging, though it falls a few times into the "randomly ask everyone about everything so you can advance" trap of adventure game design, but it's nothing too bad. The graphics are typical low res affairs, with weird technical mishaps (weird sprite scaling), but to me,that didn't matter because through the means of colours,mood etc,also helped by the great ambient soundtrack, brings the sorroundings really came across nicely. The voice acting is mostly pretty good as well. And the narrative... Most people really dislike the ending. I really loved it, it's dark,depressing and simply, how most horror stories of the era that games plays in work- so for me, it was a very good experience overall. There are some minor flaws,granted, and compared to my favorite of the wadjet eye cataolouge, unavowed, it is the weaker game for sure. But still recommended highly. Though probably not for everyone.

Very atmospheric and moody adventure game. Never gets too hard or convoluted and, asides some fairly lengthy fetch puzzles, holds a good pace. Recommended. I thoroughly enjoyed it.