The Excavation of Hob's Barrow Review (PC)

After spending several hours playing The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, I have the feeling that I’ve watched one of the best episodes of Midsomer Murders. Although there’s not really a murder that you have to solve in the game, the mystery and the atmosphere are all there plus a splash of myth.

Developed by Cloak and Dagger Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow puts players in the shoes of Thomasina Bateman, a modern Victorian woman who follows in her father’s footsteps by becoming an Antiquarian.

Passionate about her work, Thomasina decides to write a book on the barrows of England, so now she’s traveling the country to do a lot of research … and dig. However, her latest destination proves to be more challenging than anything she’s even encountered throughout her rather short career.

Thomasina’s story starts on a railway station’s platform and continues in the remote village of Bewlay. After receiving a letter from a local, our young archeologist takes the first train to the small town, hoping to add another chapter to its book.

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It’s not hard to guess that things aren’t going according to plan, which is why Thomasina is forced to do some investigation work before she’s actually allowed to dig into Hob’s Barrow. Despite being tagged as a folk horror adventure, the game does away with any jump scares, so let’s say you’re rather safe when it comes to that.

The horror bits are mostly conveyed visually and through the unsettling atmosphere. It’s a formula that works very well for a point & click narrative-driven adventure game. More importantly, the Excavation of Hob’s Barrow draws inspiration from many styles, but the most prevalent is definitely the Lovecraftian cosmic horror.

Lovecraft’s influence kicks in especially from the second part of the game onward, once the plot thickens. To make it even more obvious, The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow deals with themes like religion, superstition and folk myth.

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Gameplay-wise, this plays like every other traditional point & click adventure game. You have a rather basic inventory accessible by hovering the mouse on top of the screen where you can find all the objects that Thomasina meticulously gathers. Many of the items you find can be combined into new ones that usually represent the solution to a puzzle.

Although the pixelated art style is quite appealing, sometimes it’s hard to distinguish objects that are hidden behind pixels that more often than not have the same color as the object. Thankfully, the game is quite generous when it comes to hints, so I did not have any issues with the puzzles.

I will say that the very last part focuses solely on puzzles, which is a bit disappointing considering that the game is trying to build a lot of tension toward the end before revealing its big mystery. It certainly broke the immersion for me, but I kept going because I had to see if Thomasina’s choices would continue to be bad till the end.

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The Good

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