Dig Hob’s Cart Review
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What’s so special about Thomasina Bateman? Did she wear a special amulet? Did an alien embryo shoot into her brain? She doesn’t have recurring nightmares, at least not at the start of the game. Maybe she’s a… no, let’s not go there, even though she’s definitely not a cop either. Whatever it was, it took her to a village in the north of England that, on the surface, looked normal, with residents doing their thing and nothing more than a happy “hi up”.
need to know
what is it? Unique British Folk Horror Spot “n” Clicks
Expected payment: £20/$20 (guess, please check before posting)
Developer: cloak and dagger game
Publisher: Eye of Waja
Comment on: Threadripper 2950x, 64GB RAM, RTX 3080
multiplayer game? Do not
Association: Steam(opens in a new tab)
Of course more than that, otherwise Thomasina wouldn’t be here. She’s an outspoken modern Victorian woman scraping by as an antique dealer, summoned to the village of Bewlay by an elusive man who is the driving force behind the digging of a certain wheelbarrow. What secret did she discover?
Wonderful things – although identifying them may require going beyond artistic style. Low-res blocky sprites might work for Maniac Mansion, but the game is mostly set indoors. In Hob’s Barrow’s, majestic woodlands and recognizable songbirds, as well as endless barren wilderness, are rendered into a multitude of individual pixels that are difficult to blend into a whole.
In the subterranean part of the second half of the game, the exterior blends together, with rocks and weird pink lights. When it’s not muddy, the hand-painted look certainly has a lot of charm.
And the atmosphere. That’s the game’s forte, its folk-horror roots figuratively and literally digging into the land around Bewlay, dragging out a horrific tale that dragged me all the way to its fatal end. Unless you count the behavior of a stray cat, there’s little real horror here about jumping fear or gore. It’s a subtle horror that makes you sit and think about the impact these wonderfully-sounding villagers have on yourself.
(Image credit: Cloak and Dagger Games)
Thomasina’s character greatly adds to this. She’s very stoic: her favorite phrases are “Curse!” and “Crap!” and she won’t take any advice to stop her proposed archaeological analysis of small, seemingly normal tombs. She doesn’t hold back when confronted with the obvious paranormal or — content warning — discussions of suicide. She is not afraid to knock on people’s doors and ask them to help her. If the telephone had been invented, she might even have been the kind of person who answered the phone. Why, you’d almost think Thomasina does have something that connects her to events in this place she’s never been.
mound twist
We stay with her as she explores the village, fetching items for the villagers so they can pass the message or drop the items she needs, battling walls of silence and misinformation along the way. Towards the end of the game, she expresses a moment of self-doubt: Is everything she sees in her head? If she gives up and returns to London, it won’t be a game and we’ll be deprived of the chance to solve a lot of adventure game puzzles. I had to translate Latin texts, reference journals in my investigations, play with apples, and really pay attention to what the villagers said to Thomasina.
The ending felt a bit rushed, but still managed to pull off a valid twist – an event at the end of the game left me staring at the monitor with my mouth open, not sure if it would have had more of an impact if I used the mouse pointer directly Watch the event.
Picture 1 of 7
This is called “making your own entertainment” (Credit: Cloak and Dagger Games)
Bartender Stanley was an affable man (Image: Cloak and Dagger Game)
View image of You’re a scary archaeologist on a foggy day in the village (Credit: Credit: Cloak and Dagger Games)
My guess is Mr Shoulder (Credit: Cloak and Dagger Games)
What can you see, Thomasina? (Image credit: Cloak and Dagger Games)
Mum Mildred squeezed a dot at the end of her nose (Image: Cloak and Dagger Games)
View image of Home is a hotel called Plough and Furrow (Credit: Credit: Cloak and Dagger Games)
But this moment could have been better: In the eight or nine hours I’ve completed Hob’s Barrow, the game happily switches from low-res action to more detailed footage, showing a particularly weird, scary, or important picture from a sitting long The old man on the bench to a so-called artist’s rough daub.Don’t use this trick at critical moments should at the pinnacle of its storytelling abilities.
The game also left problems. The lives of characters, except for a chosen group, are inconclusive, even though the entire game is driven by the need to know what happens next. The sheer amount of foreshadowing contained in the first third makes you need to know how these apparently important but obscure events might be connected, so it seems unfair to take them away at the end.
Also, a goat just disappeared. The epilogue would be nice.
But in terms of what Yes There, Hob’s Barrow (opens in new tab) is a wonderful experience, with good rhythm and great sound, and it doesn’t outpace its popularity. It’s a haunting tale of a woman’s determination to succeed and a conspiracy…well, not to stop her entirely, but to twist her work in the most hellish way possible. There was something special about Thomasina Bateman, and it led to a pretty special game.
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