Customer Reviews

Barrow Hill: Curse of the Ancient Circle

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(23)
3 star:		(8)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I give this game a 5 star rating - the game was engrossing and logical, but very free - you weren't forced to do A so that B would happen, and then allowed to move on to C. While there were some elements that needed to happen in a certain order, it wasn't the driving force behind this game.

Great graphics, very spooky environment, great audio. I even liked the voice acting.

It reminded me of Myst, in that there is a puzzle to solve, and you are given all the clues you need to solve the puzzle. It wasn't nearly as scary as Scratches, but more along the lines of the Darkfall series.

As an added bonus, there seemed to be no glitches or bugs in the program, and I didn't need any patches to run this on XP. The interface was very easy to use, and it was easy to install and start playing fast.

I hope more adventure games are made like this one, it was great!

Conrad Morse, a noted Archaeologist, has received permission to excavate the mound at Barrow Hill, a site in Cornwall that has remained undisturbed since its construction in 2500 B.C.E., according to local legends. A mysterious force seems to surround the mound, as former attempts to survey the area have resulted in disapearances. Morse's excavations have drawn the interest of the press as well as aroused the ire of several conservation groups. Matters seem about to come to a head, and on the night of the Autumn Equinox they do--but not in a way that any might have dreamed. That night you--an unnamed character with an unspecified role--are driving down the Barrow Hill road listening to the radio when, shortly after sunset, your car stalls. Behind you, some sort of forcefield prevents you from returning the way you came. Your only choice is to go on, and in the process, solve the mystery of Barrow Hill.

Barrow Hill is a lovely 1st-person slideshow game in the style of the Dark Fall series (no wonder, as Jonathan Boakes and developer Matt Clark are sometime collaborators). The action takes place in a relatively limited area, all in the course of a single night. As your surroundings are mostly deserted, you have to rely on collecting inventory and clues to find out what has happened and heal the breach that is allowing a dark force to run ramampant in the area. MOst of the puzzles involve accessing locked or blocked areas and putting together information.

Despite the dark subject matter and the literal darkness of the screen, I did not find this game quite as spooky as it might have been. Some things startled me, but I never felt personally threatened. Of course, I never encountered the large glowing stone that, by most accounts, is capable of bringing your explorations to an abrupt end. I have heard that these encounters are the result of not having completed tasks in one area before going on to the next, so I think making a logical exploration of central areas before proceeding to peripheral ones may be a lifesaver in this game.

Sounds effect and music are understated. Sometimes you'll hear a spooky chord that seems to herald a momentuous event, only to have nothing really happen. You hear quite a few birds, but don't see many. Voice acting was quite good, however. I especially enjoyed the many amusing commercials you could hear on various radio stations.

Collecting inventory was mainly easy, barring one or two pixel hunts and a few places where I had to get a hint because I wasn't quite sure what I was looking for. Collating information was more complicated, partly because you could not keep the many documents you found during the course of the game. This made taking voluminous notes a necessity. Also, there were a number of red herrings: notes that seemed to have no bearing on the case and items you could interact with that didn't have any purpose. It was easy to get bogged down trying to do something with these items other than pick them up and put them down again. One puzzle seemed unnecessary, because by the time I solved it, I had already figured out what the clues it contained revealed.

I found the ending a little abrupt and disatisfying. Once you solved the final puzzle, things happened very quickly. There was not a lot of time to look around the last area you came to. I also was left wondering about the connections between some of the elements; I wasn't quite sure who were the good guys and who were the bad. A cut scene at the end seemed sort of tacked on.

All in all, I enjoyed this game, which took me maybe 10 hours to complete. It had a level of complexity in the puzzles which I have found lacking in many inventory-based games, and the plot line was engaging and well thought out. My main critique is that I wuld have liked to have seen some of the elements developed more. However, I look forward to more games from Matt Clark and company.

A barrow is an ancient burial ground, often in the form of mounds of earth or with standing stones such as Stonehenge. England is dotted with these ancient sites, labeled as "tumuli" on maps. In 18th century England, digging up barrows was a favorite hobby of the educated, resulting in damage of the sites.

Cornwall, the southwestern tip of England, has a rich history of barrows. In Barrow Hill, a team of archaeologists is proceeding on a dig of the local barrow that features seven mysterious stones. The barrow has been left undisturbed except for the building of a service station and motel nearby, but once the team begins excavating, an ancient evil is unleashed on the land. The barrow in the game is based on Looe, Cornwall, and features parallel structures such as an ancient pagan well, barrow, swamp and service station.

Creator Matt Clark has put a phenomenal amount of time and energy into doing justice to the barrows and Cornish legends, and as a bonus there is a link to a webpage talking about the history of Cornwall, barrows, and the making of the game (I was expecting something more polished from the blurb on the back of the box). Clark was aided on Barrow Hill by horror master Jonathan Boakes, creator of Dark Fall: The Journal and Dark Fall: Lights Out.

I had difficulties installing this on my Windows XP laptop; I had to try four or five times, as each time I would begin to install, the installer would launch another copy and freeze completely. My perseverance finally paid off, though, and once I'd launched the game, I didn't encounter any bugs, crashes, or freezes.

The game begins with a grainy black-and-white film of you driving along the Cornish country roads as night begins to fall. There is a sense of dread as local radio personality Emma Harry talks about the onset of the Autumn Equinox, and dark clouds race ominously across the sky. Suddenly, your car goes dead, and you're stranded in the middle of a dark forest. But are you alone? There are strange rustles and cries from the bushes, and you're certain that something's watching...

Barrow Hill is a first-person slideshow similar to Myst in format. You advance one screen at a time (no 360-degree panning here), which can be terrifying when you're crashing through the undergrowth with only a weak battery flashlight to light the darkness. The photorealistic graphics are based on thousands of pictures of the Cornish countryside. The architecture of the few featured buildings shines, from the ruins of an ancient chapel to the worn-down service station. Little touches make each screen come to life, and there are innumerable close-ups of objects just for exploration's sake (which can be confusing at first trying to determine if it's a hotspot or not). Also like Myst, you'll soon discover that Barrow Hill is devoid of people other than yourself and one or two secondary characters that you interact with only briefly. Where has everyone gone? What happened to the archaeological team? Why are there idling cars with no occupants?

The sound deserves special mention, as thousands of ambient sounds were recorded in Cornwall to add to the authenticity, including the chirp of the Cornish cricket. The soundtrack is sparse but effective, underscoring moments of danger or discovery. Voice acting is satisfactory, if a bit melodramatic at times.

On your quest, you're aided by several high-tech gadgets, including a cell phone, PDA, GPS, and a metal detector. All of these tools play a part in your quest to restore balance to the barrow. There are plenty of well-scattered clues to the nature of your task, informative background reading in the form of pamphlets, diaries, and mock websites, and many locations to explore.

The puzzles are inventory-based and generally intuitive. You pick up only what you need to aid you on your quest, and once you've used it, it disappears from inventory. The journals and gadgets left behind by the team give you plenty of fodder to consider your next move. You can die, and if you do, you're placed one step before your fatal mishap.

The biggest achievement after the outstanding sound and graphics is the immersive atmosphere of utter dread...although not gory, you constantly feel hunted by the sense that something evil is looking over your shoulder, from creepy voices on disconnected telephones to ominous smoldering piles of ash next to idled vehicles, or the crash of something following you in the pitch-black woods. My only disappointment was in the super-brief ending that didn't seem to resolve much of the detailed storyline that had unfolded throughout the game, but in Barrow Hill it's the journey, not the destination, that counts.

Creative gameplay doesn't necessarily require a big budget as this game proves. This engaging adventure expands an existing megalithic monument to a mystic game realm, where you have to solve the disappearances in a small hammock somewhere in the British country side. The puzzles are logical and advance the game. Although the murderous entity may be surprising and a little clumsily presented, it is fun until the end. Then just visit the real sites that acted as the basis for the locations in the game.

This game reminds me of those really bad survival horror playstation games. I say this because everything you do has to be precise. For example: You see a door and you can't open it. So you have to search high and low for a rubber band to place it on the doorknob. Still can't open the door, so you have to search high and low for something with substantial weight to balance on the rubber band, so that the rubber band can swing low turning the doorknob opening the door. Couldn't you just turn the doorknob with your hands? This example didn't come from this game, but it's similar stuff like. You can't do things without finding other stuff first. This can be long and frustrating... yet addicting if you're stubborn.

I wish you could do more than just point-and-click. The game is a bit eerie and at times I thought I was going to jump out my seat, but knowing all you could do is just point-and-click really takes away the excitement. There's no way you can go to combat with your fancy point-and-click trick. No no.. it's way too fancy.
A lot of the times I wasn't sure when was the right moment to click. The arrow of your mouse will turn into either a direction (left, right, or up) or a magnifying glass telling you that you can zoom either in or out. But you'd have to place your arrow directly over an item, and it's hard to identify interacting objects because they were random, at least in my opinion. My roommate thinks differently. You'd look at a table with a bunch of boxes on it, and you suspect there's something in there, you move your mouse the box on the left but your arrow doesn't change into the magnifying glass, nor does it change for the box on the right, but sure enough it changes for the box huddled inbetween a broken couch and empty bottles. And you'd have to be careful not to move the arrow so far up or down on the screen because black margin's will show up (containing objects you've picked up and can use).

I did enjoy having to find scraps of paper in various locations especially if they hold important information. My roommate hated this because that meant you had to read everything... and there was A LOT to read. But it made me feel like a real detective. My advice: make notes on everything you think is important. Just so you don't have to kill yourself trying to find that one scrap of paper in that abandoned and random place to figure out the combination of the lock to a room you need to go in.

I give this game a 3.5 because of the reasons I've mentioned. Having a battle would be fun, and only if it wasn't so random. But it did keep me going-- I am a bit stubborn to figure things out so I was always on my computer. I'd play it again in a year or so, just so I can forget the step-by-step process and start anew.

This game is cute and fun. It's easy to immerse yourself in it and become the unnamed main character. It involves some problem solving techniques, though nothing over complicated or too hard. I solved it in about two hours without a walkthrough. There is only one enemy and it will only kill you if you go on the wrong path before the required clues are collected and you don't have to even run from it then, just turn around. And even if you do die, nothing happens. There is no experience to lose, no levels to raise. You are basically in a scavenger hunt for items and clues in a very small playing field. You can set your own pace, but there really is not any point in delaying because unless you are going to the next clue, nothing will happen. The controls are stiff compared to modern controls, you basically click on the four sides of the screen to move with very little finesse, but at least you can cover huge areas with a single click. The sounds are moody and believable, the atmosphere is not scary but somehow compelling, a little creepy and a little... well almost peaceful. It is a horror mystery, but it feels familiar, like an old well worn nightmare you know by heart. There are a couple of gruesome images, a fried slag heap that used to be a kid with twisted glasses, a single sneaker, and scattered coloring crayons, toys, and books and the on-phone killing of a dog, but it is mild enough to be kid safe.

If you are looking for a horror shooter, this isn't it. Get the Silent Hill Games.
If you are looking for something scary, this isn't it. Get the Fatal Frame Games.
If you want challenging puzzles and mind benders or obscure clues, this isn't it. Try Killing Ground for that.

If you want a fun diversion to remind you of simpler times, buy Barrow Hill and enjoy it.

The game is amazing in that it technically primitive by today's standards, but just us much fun as its more technologically advanced counterparts. The world is not true 3D, but rather a collection of images with some fading between them. However the images themselves and the sound track are so artfully done, the experience they create is on par with anything else out there. The story is very cohesive, intriguing and very nicely told. The puzzles are not too challenging, but were fine for me -- I have other things in my life I have to think hard about. This game was, fun, entertaining, but not tiresome.

This is one of the best "point 'n click" adventures I have played in a long time, for MANY reasons.

-great atmosphere, super spooky lighting and shadows with creepy
unsettling sounds and music track. Eerie footsteps and breathing sounds follow you wherever you go.

-Logical puzzles that are not randomly put in. Basically, all the puzzles have a why along with the how. They use more realistic ways of putting in "puzzles" like having to use a GPS system or metal detector to find important items instead of having to solve some silly puzzle to open a secret door to get to the loot (heck, in this game sometimes you can just go for the practical "prying open" solution to a locked object).

-VERY accurate details regarding Cornish history and legends (they even went out of their way to record real Cornish crickets for the background sounds).

-VERY accurate info on Wiccan and Pagan practices and philosophies. I actually am Wiccan/Pagan and a lot of their info was spot on in regards to what we actually practice.

-They included a bunch of information regarding the game and things portrayed in the game on the disc. So, even when you've finished the game, you can go find out about the real "Barrow Hill" and some general stuff about Paganism.


Some might not care, but being a Pagan myself it was very refreshing to see such an accurate (at least when it comes to the information provided), positive approach to a spooky story involving Pagan practices. It shows the Pagan ideas and beliefs as forgotten and misunderstood instead of the typical picture of us as wild, Satan-worshiping, human-sacrificing heathens. So many suspense or horror stories involving Pagans are so inaccurate, as if we need to be shown as monsters to have the story be frightening. This story accomplishes BOTH, scaring the pants off of you while still using accurate information (except for the super fantastical elements in the story. Once you play, you will know what I mean...)

There were, however, some shortcomings, but they were so small I didn't think they really called for a subtraction of stars from my review (maybe a half a star, but since I can't give it 4 1/2 stars I've given it 5).

-It was short. Yep, really short. I finished it in about 2 days of on and off playing (I had to take breaks it would creep me out so much). I only payed about 5 bucks for my copy, so it being so short really didn't bug me (except that I wanted to keep playing it!)

-It was a little low budget, but not as much as I would expect from a smaller company. The scenes were beautiful and and the atmosphere was great, but you could tell they were trying to save money whenever you had to talk to someone...they just had a lot of still pics instead of a movie of the person talking to you. This really didn't take away from the game though.

Anyway, the pros far outweigh the cons and I would DEFINITELY recommend this to:
-Wiccans or Pagans (or those interested in Paganism or "Witchcraft")
-Suspense or Psychological Thriller fans
-Beginning players or players that don't have a lot of time to obsess over a game

However, I would NOT recommend this game to:
-People who have a hard time with Witchcraft or Paganism being shown as a positive thing
-Horror fans who like gore (this game has none...)
-People who have a lot of free time and want a game they can really sink their teeth into for a long while...

Absolutely GREAT game!

I have to say that I watched the development of this game before Matt Clark went 'public' and out of the 'independent game' category. I'm actually one of the 1st 100 people who ordered it. I was NOT EVEN REMOTELY disappointed!!!! HURRAY. I'm only sorry that I'm so late in posting my review here, because Mr. Clark has done such a wonderful job!

I admit to having a real weakness for adventure games of the Celtic/mystery supernatural gendre, so I'm real picky. I was NOT disappointed - even slightly!

Even from the beginning, the game doesn't let up, and at all points, it is appropiately spooky. It's night, after all, so everything is dark. The parts that are in the "present" seem like islands in a much larger scheme of things. Yours to discover how and why.

The whole game fits together PERFECTLY - and as I've said, I'm real picky!

Mr. Clark, I continue to play your wonderful game, and I'm so proud that my vigilance paid off. It's a play again - over and over. How many games does one play about which that can be said?!

If you love Celtic myth and mystery as much as I do - BUY IT!!!!!

BTaylor

Barrow Hill is one of those rare independently developed games that jumps to a professional level of quality. The setting is genuinely creepy. Every element of the game contributes to a general sense of unease. The graphics, while outdated, are utilized in such a way to be extremely effective. The sound is probably the most striking part. Crickets, rustling leaves and birds are all represented in the game with stunning execution. The locations are very detailed and feel very realistic. Players will explore and interact with a large number of objects, but only a very small number of these have any purpose in play. While this helps create atmosphere, it may also confuse the player in some cases.

The story is excellently developed and allows the player to roll into it, rather than forcing their hand. This presents the player with a real sense of accomplishment and control that isn't always present in other adventure games.

The game does have some weak spots, unfortunately. Without spoiling anything, the game does lose some fear elements when the player finally encounters the primary antagonist. Additionally, the game may be far too easy and consequently too short for an experienced adventure gamer.

For the price paid, I feel like I got a good amount. There's some bonus materials including a large amount of additional content concerning the game's real world setting of Cornwall, England. Additionally there's some behind-the-scenes information on the game's development.