Since the first time I booted up Zork I: The Great Underground Empire on my TRS-80, I've been a fan of adventure games. That's where my pseudonym comes from, after all -- what better way to pay homage to the genre I love than to rep for the Interactive Fiction masterpiece that captured my heart decades ago?
In the years since, adventure games have gone from imagination-powered typing fests to full-blown graphical extravaganzas, with lovingly-rendered environments, voice acting, full-motion video, and professionally-recorded soundtracks. After the mid-2000's, the adventure genre underwent something of a collapse thanks to an over-proliferation of sub-par titles flooding the field. Recent years have seen a resurging interest in point-and-click titles as gamers like me age out of the reflexes and time commitment necessary to heed the Call of Duty each Fortnight though, and with the rise of game-making tools like Unity, the adventure genre is slowly coming back. Among my favorites are two releases by plucky indie developer Matt Clark, who took his peanut-buttery love of archaeology and mashed it into the chocolatey goodness of his fondness for southwestern England, then layered it over crispy wafers of paranormal happenings to create Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle and its sequel, Barrow Hill: The Dark Path.
Damn it, now I'm hungry.
Stupid sexy metaphors.
Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle was released in 2006, and it stars you (yes, you!) as a simple person driving through southwest England on the eve of the Autumn Equinox, where twelve hours of darkness perfectly balance out twelve hours of daylight. With the soothing voice of local amateur DJ Emma Harry keeping you company as you cross the Cornish countryside, everything's going fine until you pass a pair of stone monoliths flanking the road and your car shudders to a stop. Great, just great -- stranded in rural Cornwall right as the sun's gone down.
Fortunately it looks as though just down the road a bit is a service station, complete with a garage, bathrooms, a small cafe, and even a three-room motel should you need to spend the night while your car gets fixed. Unfortunately, someone or something has already visited, and they were interested in more than just petrol.
The station's night attendant, Ben Kendal, has locked himself in the office and refuses to come out. Everything was going fine until that team of archaeologists led by Conrad Morse started digging around the ancient stone circle enclosing a Bronze Age burial mound, and the team's occasional clashes with local protesters at "Stop the Dig!" rallies certainly didn't help.
What Morse and his team have stirred up is unclear. What is clear, however, is that nobody in Barrow Hill is going anywhere until someone gets to the bottom of things. There being few residents willing to take on the supernatural, congratulations: you're nominated! Gather your supplies, learn about ancient pagan rituals, and settle in for a long night of exploration, puzzle solving, and heartbreak on the Cornish moor, where your only ally is a young woman broadcasting smooth beats and jazzy rhythms from a beat-up Winnebago in the nearby swamp on Barrow Hill Radio, FAB-ulous 15.3 on your dial.
Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle is, more than anything else, a labor of love. Developer Matt Clark wore many hats during the creation of this game, and that's important to keep in mind because it's not the result of fifty team members putting in two years of development and eight weeks of crunch to meet a deadline.
It's not a triple-A studio production with millions of dollars poured into its creation.
Instead, it's the culmination of years' worth of work by one passionate man who loves Cornwall, archaeology, and the paranormal, and who made a game mixing all three using Macromedia Director, and succeeded admirably. But to share in the joy of this game's existence, you have to be in the proper mindset. Just as you cannot compare a local stage production to a Broadway blockbuster, neither can you compare Barrow Hill to its contemporaries like Syberia or other large-scale creations. Barrow Hill requires your understanding: you're going to see the limitations Matt was forced to lean into and work around to bring his creation to life, and you have to be OK with that. If you are, you'll have a dandy time exploring Cornwall, the moors, the standing stones, and ancient pagan rituals.
The name of Barrow Hill's game is 'atmosphere'. Presented in Myst's style, where you navigate various screens in a slideshow presentation, using your mouse to interact with various objects in each scene, gameplay couldn't be simpler. A context-sensitive cursor changes to indicate items you can pick up, places items can be used, areas you can zoom into for a closer look, and simple navigation. While it seems like there's not a lot to do at first, you'll quickly learn the area around Barrow Hill is larger than it appears, and you'll visit a plethora of locations as you work to solve the mystery at hand. The game's soundtrack is built around building a layer of suspense, and Matt spent hours outside recording the local wildlife for incidental sounds, so those crickets and bird calls you hear during the game are authentic Cornwall critters, not just sounds sourced from an open library.
Matt's design philosophy is sandbox as opposed to linear: Barrow Hill is built to allow you to wander as you see fit, and while story progression is often linked to puzzle solving, it's very rare that you'll slam your head up against a puzzle that completely blocks your progress. You can almost always go somewhere else and muck around if you seem to be stuck in one area, and as more areas of the game open up as you acquire gear and solve puzzles, you'll have plenty to keep you busy. There's a ton of in-game lore, much of which is extraneous and serves as simple world-building, and NPC interactions are few and far between, and usually involve a phone call as opposed to face-to-face conversation.
As such, you won't find branching dialog trees or similar genre conventions: NPCs impart the information you need then back off-stage until they're called for again. A death state is possible, but unlikely after the first time you run into something that can kill you, and I never encountered any game-breaking bugs or points where I inadvertently locked myself out of being able to proceed. Save periodically and you'll be just fine.
The game also has two endings, and if you rush right in to the end game you're apt to get the less-satisfying one. Spend some time thinking about what the ancient spirits guarding the circle would want you to do, don't half-ass it, and you'll get the better ending.
One thing Barrow Hill does not provide (at least not until later when you've picked up a couple of gadgets) is an in-game map; you'll probably want to sketch out the paths until you've got the layout down. There's also no notebook or built-in hint system, thus it's up to you to keep a journal of the different things you learn. Keep pencil and paper handy during your playthrough, and you'll be just fine.
Overall, the experience Barrow Hill offers is of the quieter variety. You aren't likely to be scared by the game, yet its atmosphere is immersive and impressive. Play after dark with a good set of gaming headphones and a willingness to go along for the ride, and Matt may get a few good jumps out of you. (That bloody crow...!)
Best of all though is the price. When it first came out in the US, Barrow Hill was $20. Today, a quick trip to GOG.com provides you with a DRM-free digital download, fully patched to the latest version, along with a high-quality version of the game's soundtrack, a map of most of the game's areas, and a walkthrough written by Matt Clark himself to ensure you don't get stuck while playing, for only $7.99 (or less if you wait for a sale).
If you're a fan of indie games, and you enjoy point-and-click adventures, you could do worse than give this old girl a try. There's no combat, no action sequences, and the puzzles are logically consistent and mostly self-evident, so you shouldn't need to rely on the "try everything on everything else when you can't read the developer's mind" method which infects other games of its ilk. It's a fun ghost story for an autumn evening, well worth the price of admission.
What's even better is that in 2016, a full ten years after its original 2006 release, Matt Clark released Barrow Hill: The Dark Path, a sequel which returns you to the Cornish countryside on another dark night to solve a new mystery...
...but that's a tale for part two, my friends. So I do hope you'll hit that upvote button and join me for a trot down The Dark Path when next our paths cross.
(Happy now, @vincentnijman?) ;)
I certainly am happy with this review. Never heard of it but it feels highly nostalgic. Reminds me of games like Gabriel Knight and Phantasmagoria, although I played those a little longer ago ( mid 90s to early 2000s ).
I will give this a better look at night, as that seems more fitting and it also reminds me that I was considering to get myself a Raspberry Pi 400 and try to set that up as a retro gaming computer, among other things.
Thanks for sharing this amazing review and have a great week my friend!
P.S. Ever heard of Tammy and the T-Rex ( 1994)? I watched that one yesterday, after having heard of it on the 'How Did This Get Made?' podcast.
Thanks, man! You poked me to post more often, so I figured I should tag you in. I had been working on this one for a few days. :)
Barrow Hill is quite similar to those games, though it was created about a decade after them. Same genre though.
And yes, Tammy and the T-Rex is...well, it's certainly a film that somebody made, isn't it? I'd say I'm sorry you sat through it, but it's one of those things every film geek should do once, I suppose. :)
Congratulations @modernzorker! You have completed the following achievement on the Hive blockchain and have been rewarded with new badge(s) :
Your next target is to reach 69000 upvotes.
You can view your badges on your board and compare yourself to others in the Ranking
If you no longer want to receive notifications, reply to this comment with the word
STOPSupport the HiveBuzz project. Vote for our proposal!