Please don’t make the same mistake I made. When Horace came out last month, it was all too easy to dismiss it as just another cutesy indie platformer drowning in references to the classics. Well, that’s exactly what I did, and it’s only now that I’m catching up on this densely detailed, hugely enjoyable work of real warmth. It cute, and is drowning in references, but it’s also one of the most winningly human games I’ve played – and I’m not just talking about this year.
HoraceDeveloper: Paul Helman, Sean ScaplehornPublisher: 505 GamesAvailability: Out now on PC
Maybe that rich vein of humanity comes from Horace’s genesis, it being the culmination of six years of work primarily from a sole developer – one Paul Helman – along with the help with some of his friends. Helman’s something of an industry veteran, although Horace has the energy and anarchy of great outsider art, fizzing with exciting contradictions and match-ups. Horace is billed as a triple-A platformer, its action interspersed with fully narrated cutscenes that tell a rich, frequently funny and genuinely moving Pinocchio-esque story of a robot brought to life.
The warmth and wackiness throughout Horace reminds me of that other great piece of video game outsider art, Shigesato Itoi’s Earthbound, albeit through a very British filter – and a filter that’s best if you’re of a certain vintage. Before the title screen there’s a riff on the old Thames Television ident, while the writing is full of allusions and lifts from Spike Milligan and Douglas Adams. Even the main character himself is a not-so-subtle nod to William Tang’s ZX Spectrum series of the 80s – and it says so much for Horace that it feels every bit the rightful successor to the anarchy and jollity that coursed through so much British software of the era.
So yes, Horace is thick with references, though they’re not cloying – they’re merely the backdrop to a gently told story of an emerging consciousness, forming the fabric behind the same awakening many of us would have had in our teens in whatever godforsaken corner of this rainy isle that we grew up on. It’s all rainy afternoons and rundown housing estates with the splashes of colour provided by trips to the VHS rental store and the local arcade.