Harold Halibut is a game that uses three and a half buttons. On an Xbox controller, you press Y to bring up a menu, B to exit a menu, and A to interact with things in the menu or in the wider world of Fedora 1. You use a joystick to walk at Harold's leisurely pace, but it's not a button, so? The half button is the left trigger that you press to zoom in on Harold's face in pseudo photo mode. Despite the simplicity of the control scheme and complete lack of mechanical depth, I love Harold Haltus with all my heart.
I've described it this way before, but Harold Halibut is like a Wes Anderson movie with stop-motion animation and a quirky cast. From the eccentric inventor Cyrus, who is in a years-long feud with fellow scientist Professor Maro over their differing archiving methods, to the relaxed, kimono-clad Tinnerbaum, and the captain who has lost his only friend, a bird named Koko, I can easily see how Bill Murray, Jason Schwartzman and Tilda Swinton fit the bill.
I love exploring the limits of this amazing underwater spacecraft. I love having weird conversations with the ship's crazy crew. I love seeing the fish swim past the windows with handwritten banners proclaiming the freedom of the ocean, because apparently they have gained insight and the ability to hold a pen.
But most of all, I love the details. Small storage rooms filled with retro-futuristic junk. Elevator under the captain's pilot seat. A natural distrust of the fish served for dinner. And my favorite of these details is the game menu.
The game's menu is diegetic, viewable on a funky PDA designed in the same retro-futuristic style as the rest of Fedora 1. Pressing one of those three buttons pulls it up to reveal an old-school screen, green with LEDs and a torn font straight out of a Casio calculator . On the left side of the screen there are menu items – check your to-do list or read messages, and on the right side is the notepad. An actual paper notebook in which Harold draws little doodles of what happens in the story. It's a glorious dichotomy of digital and analog, and turning the pages is an extreme pleasure.
However, there is a third option in Casio's digital menu. Applications. I glanced at it, imagining Harold's plasticine hand turning a clumsy knob or pressing a chunky button. If Microsoft made a retro-futuristic Xbox controller…
Additional systems are Doculates, Core Ruptorials, and Toast in Space. None of them do anything. They all do everything. Let me explain. These parameters have no game purpose (yet). They don't do that to do whatever. But they look fantastic and help build the world of Fedora 1 better than most games in their entire runtime.
Selecting Core Ruptorials opens up a sort of histogram and two pie charts that rotate slowly. Apparently, they represent the Central Torkutas. I don't know what those words mean (because they're empty) and I don't need to know. It's some kind of diagnosis, written in bright yellow, blue, and dot neon green highlights. I don't know if these points are good or not, but apparently the red lights flash more when something is wrong.
The same goes for Doculates. This version shows four shapes shaded with thick yellow lines. The circle, diamond, square, and star clearly represent things, but I have no idea what those things are. I'm not sure Harold either. Professor Maro can.
I won't even spoil what Toast in Space is, but the title is a hell of a clue.
It doesn't matter that it all makes no sense. This is a decoration of the menu. It's that little extra detail that sells you into the world of Harold Halibut, that immerses you in life aboard Fedora 1. And more games should do this. I didn't even realize I was sick of the menus being just a pause screen until I experienced something better, something bigger. I want fun buttons that do nothing, I want a device that feels at home in the game it exists in. And I want one of Harold's PDAs in real life so I can stare at the oscillating graphs until I fall asleep.
