Wadjet Eye Games, the producers of the Blackwell series, Technobabylon, and Strangeland, are producing some of the most incredible point-and-click adventures to ever grace the PC platform. The Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, developed by Cloak and Dagger Games, is just the latest to join the list of excellent games.

Set in Victorian era England, Thomasina Bateman travels to the rural village of Bewlay to investigate a local barrow – the name for a mound of earth that sometimes signals where ancient remains are buried. After finding her local contact missing and the superstitious townsfolk unwilling to say a peep about the mysterious barrow, Thomasina decides to investigate on her own. What follows is a foreboding tale of folklore horror and personal tragedy.

Hob’s Barrow has a bounty of naturally creepy elements. Tombs, ancient remains, and burial grounds might be well-tapped horror material, but there haven’t been many games that focus on the actual digging part. Being isolated underground, surrounded by tonnes of dirt and who knows how many bugs and worms is a terrifying concept even before you add anything supernatural. Bring in the social anxiety of being a career-driven woman stranded in an isolated, backwards village in the 19th century, and you’ve got a perfect recipe for a horror game.

The game follows Thomasina through four days in Bewlay, which starts on day one with Thomasina arriving only to find that the person who summoned her to the isolated town is suddenly nowhere to be found. Things only get weirder for her from there.

Hob’s Barrow‘s gameplay is the familiar puzzle-solving adventure we all know and love. There isn’t anything here that innovates from anything we’ve seen before, but that’s no bad thing. The puzzles serve the narrative of the story; as Thomasina finds herself with fewer resources than expected, she has to start doing a few local favours to encourage the townfolk of Bewlay to give her the time of day. All the puzzles are a healthy mix of logical, social, and just a bit of trial and error.

As you progress, Thomasina will periodically experience flashbacks to her past that explore her fond memories of her father, who is bedridden following an accident. While they do not seem at first to be directly relevant, piece by piece they lay the foundation for the game’s events, revealing that this tragic tale really could not have ended any other way.

Throughout Thomasina’s interactions with the suspicious townsfolk, you are sometimes given the option to choose Thomasina’s actions when it comes to certain small decisions. You can even lie or conceal your motivations to some townsfolk. I was excited at the idea that the story might branch out depending on how much Thomasina trusts the people around her, but it turns out that it affects nothing at all – disappointing! It still adds a bit of flavour to your interactions, but giving the player the impression they can control Thomasina’s choices comes back to bite the game in the ass later on when Thomasina begins to make decisions that seem to run counter to common sense. Ignoring the player’s ability to make choices, Thomasina’s actions make perfect sense considering what she has learned throughout her investigation in Bewlay,