The Excavation of Hob's Barrow is a Folk Horror Point-and-Click Adventure Game set in Victorian Britain, and developed by Cloak and Dagger Games and published by Wadjet Eye Games, released for the PC in September 2022, with a Nintendo Switch port released in January 2023. The developers have cited the works of Montague Rhodes James and H. P. Lovecraft as influences for the work's tone and atmosphere.
Thomasina Bateman is a Londonian antiquarian with an interest in excavating tumuli and similar landmarks across the English countryside. One day, she receives a letter from a man named Leonard Shoulder, a local resident from a little village named Bewlay way out on the moors, telling her of a mysterious barrow located in his very own hometown — a place shrouded in dark mysteries.
Thomasina journeys to Bewlay, only to find that Mr. Shoulder, despite his promises to join up with her upon her arrival, never shows up at their appointed meeting spot and is nowhere to be found. Undeterred, Thomasina decides to continue her work, unabated by the skepticism from the local habitants of the village, who find this strange woman scholar from the city who wears trousers to be a most unorthodox sight indeed, and their foreboding hushed tales about what happened last time someone dared to disturb Hob's Barrow...
The game uses the following tropes:
- Adventurer Archaeologist: Thomasina is an antiquarian: she explores tumuli in search of pottery, human remains and other indicators of ancient human presence - for all intents and purposes, a proto-archaeologist. She also comes to the village of Bewlay with a great sense of curiosity and adventure about what she may find in her next dig.
- All for Nothing: The earlier excavation of Hob's Barrow by Thomasina's father, where he sealed Abraxas Rex in the barrow with a binding spell. By the end of the game, Thomasina has undone her father's spell and let Abraxas Rex out again, in a failed attempt to revive her father from the coma he fell into after performing the original spell. For some extra salt in the wound, Abraxas Rex then possess Thomasina and forces her to kill her father out of revenge for sealing him in.
- Ambiguous Time Period: Downplayed. The story has been confirmed by both subtle details in-game and
Word of God to take place at some point in the latter end of the Victorian Era, but no specific year or even decade is ever mentioned directly within the story itself. - Animal Motifs: Serpents/snakes and goats.
- Goats seem to be prevalent, since a puzzle in the underground ruins requires six statues of animal heads to be turned to face "the Seventh Archontic", a goat's head. Also, a pitch-black goat serves as the guardian of the ruins, and must be dealt with before the player can continue further.
- Snakes also seem associated with Abraxas Rex, since a small coin/effigy depicts him as an anguipedal (snake-footed) human with a cockerel's head.
- The Bad Guy Wins: The whole game was a setup by Lord Panswyck and Leonard Shoulder, who intended Thomasina to enter Abraxas's chamber and undo her father's binding spell to release it.
- Bathroom Breakout: Arthur Tillett escuses himself to Thomasina and sneaks out to the back of the restroom.
- Batman Gambit: Thomasina is ultimately the victim of one. Lord Panswyck and Leonard Shoulder banked on her devotion to her father, and prodded her along with just enough clues to make her believe that by undoing the ritual her father did back in the day, she would be able to wake from his coma, simply so she would end up freeing Abraxas Rex by offering up her blood of her own free will.
- Blood Magic: Some 25 years ago, Thomasina's own father led an expedition to the same Hob's Barrow, with disastrous consequences for all involved. Before he left, he trapped Abraxas deep in its chamber with a binding spell and his own blood. The bad guys intend to resurrect their deity by having Thomasina break the spell with her blood.
- Broken Bridge: The path to the old lady in the woods is only accessible the second day around when the workers have finished their logging.
- Burn Baby Burn: In a flashback we see the mother burn all the father's documents after he's become bedridden.
- Campbell Country: The game utilizes the foggy, sparsely populated English moors, creepy folklore, and the distrust of the local community towards an outsider from the city to create a generally eerie, oppressive, and paranoid atmosphere. England's older history is eventually referenced when Thomasina explores the innards of the Temple underneath the titular barrow, which seems to be overtly Roman in its origins.
- Character Narrator: Thomasina is both the player character and the story's narrator, telling the events of the titular excavation to her mother.
- Chekhov's Boomerang: True to their purpose as tools, Thomasina's knife, trowel, and chisel are quite useful in solving several puzzles throughout the game.
- Church Lady: Thomasina meets Mrs. de Plancy, a nice church lady who bakes sweets and gives the earnings to the local church's upkeep. She is also friends with the church's vicar.
- Creepy Red Herring: When Thomasina meets Father Roache in Herne Wood, he promptly vomits and then asks Thomasina to perform bloodletting on him. This is disquieting at best, and suggests something is seriously wrong with Father Roache. This is incorrect: Father Roache is kind to Thomasina, helps her find Leonard Shoulder's house, and his illness never comes up again. He's also strongly opposed to Lord Panswyck's restoration of the chapel on the Pansywck family lands, which is tied to the actual evil in Bewlay..
- Daddy's Girl: Thomasina is closest to her father since he was the one who inspired her to take up a career in archaeology when she was a young woman. Her relationship with her mother, in contrast, is quite cold and distant. Her devotion to her father is also what leads to her downfall at the end of the game.
- Demonic Possession: At the end, Thomasina gets possessed by Abraxas Rex who makes her kill her father.
- Downer Ending: And how! Lord Panswyck and Leonard Shoulder trick Thomasina into reviving their malevolent deity, Abraxas Rex. Thomasina, possessed by the deity, murders her housemaids and her own father, and gets locked up in a mental institution for the rest of her life, with her own mother refusing to speak to her.
- Dramatic Irony: The player explicitly leaves Thomasina's point of view just once, when Arthur Tillett tries telling her that he saw Mr. Shoulder and Lord Panswyck plotting against her in the woods, which triggers a flashback from Arthur's point of view. However; Arthur gets interrupted by the sudden arrival of Lord Panswyck before he can actually tell her what he witnessed, meaning that while the player gets see what he was trying to warn her about, Thomasina herself remains ignorant of it.
- Drone of Dread: The soundtrack during the Temple of Abraxas Rex segment is dominated by this to underscore the creepy atmosphere.
- Elaborate Underground Base: Hob's Barrow forms the gateway for an elaborate underground cave system.
- Eldritch Abomination: It is heavily implied that Abraxas Rex in his true form is this. Thomasina certainly notices that she cannot really describe her own encounter with him up close.I can still scarcely believe what I saw looming over me in that stygian chamber. How does one even attempt to describe the indescribable? The vision before me defied all logical explanations. All my efforts to do so have fallen on deaf ears, merely providing a chance to be mocked, pitied and dismissed as mentally unsound. I dare not commit that unfathomable glimpse to paper. But it was REAL, mother. HE is real. Not an imaginary terror... but a demon... a GOD brought to life.
- Evil Is Petty: Abraxas Rex "thanks" Thomasina for freeing him by possessing her and forcing her to kill her father under his control, in what is heavily implied to be revenge for imprisoning him in the first place.
- Evil Old Folks: Leonard Shoulder is a somewhat frail-looking, elderly gentleman. His precise age is never stated, but it is frequently implied that he is somewhere in his late 70s, possibly pushing 80. He also turns to be the co-leader of the Cult of Abraxas Rex alongside Lord Panswyck.
- Exact Eavesdropping: In Arthur Tillett's flashback, he hangs out in the woods when Mr. Shoulder and Lord Panswyck appear and talk about their Evil Plan. Tillett almost gives himself away by having an Alcohol Hic.
- Exact Words: When Lord Panswyck describes the chapel on his land to Thomasina, he refers to "He" and "Him" rather than "God". He's not talking about the Christian God, but about Abraxas Rex, the evil deity Panswyck is trying to revive.
- Expecting Someone Taller: Played with. Upon finding out that James, the local artist, is also the enigmatic Lord Panswyck, Thomasina begins saying the trope name, but James finishes the sentence for her.Thomasina: I was expecting—
James: "Someone significantly older and less handsome?" - Fantasy-Forbidding Father: Thomasina's father was a staunch believer in rationalism, and he therefore insisted on teaching her that everything had a scientific explanation and reject any notions of the existence of the supernatural as superstition and "hogwash". It is slightly played with, in that it is clear that he believed that discovering the truth through the scientific method could be just as exciting and wondrous as any fairytale, and that it was this lesson he really wanted to impart upon his daughter. It is quite a shock to her to learn that her father was looking into magic and was even serious about it during his own visit to Bewlay.
- Flashback: The story has a number of Happy Flashbacks of little Thomasina and her father.
- Folk Horror: The game's description says it is a "folk horror" story, focusing on a mysterious landmark in an idyllic, but fairly isolated village in the moors.
- Foreshadowing: Leonard Shoulder's cottage has a stone carving of a moon hanging on his front door. Lord Panswyck's manor also has one over his porch. This serves to indicate that both men are in league with each other, and also with their deity Abraxas.
- Gratuitous Latin: The game is divided into chapters, each one titled with a Latin word.
- Gruesome Goat:
- Mr. Briden has a nasty goat which Thomasina tries to stay away from.
- The guardian of the underground ruins is a goat black as pitch with purple eyes. After Thomasina deals with him by solving a puzzle, the animal disappears in wisps of black smoke.
- Hairpin Lockpick: Thomasina uses a found hairpin to unlock the door to the postmaster's storeroom with her crate inside.
- Imperfect Ritual: It was suggested at one point that the excavation 25 years prior was doomed by an incomplete binding ritual performed by Thomasina's father.
- Interface Spoiler: A downplayed example. The auto-mapping function displays locations you haven't visited yet as a set of question marks, but the linear nature of the game means you'll visit all the locations eventually.
- In-Universe Catharsis: The long-suffering servant, Ms. Thompkins, has had to work under Lord Panswyck's cruel housekeeper, Ms. Fenwyck, for years. When she, thanks to some help from Thomasina, is reunited with her boyfriend, Eddie, and the couple can put their plans to run away together into action, Ms. Thompkins immediately takes revenge by casually picking Ms. Fenwyck's beloved Hippeastrum flowers right in front of her face. When Ms. Fenwyck protests, Ms. Thompkins proceeds to gleefully call her an "old sow" as she tells her to stick her complaints up where the sun don't shine, before she and Eddie happily walk away together.
- Jump Scare: Once every so often you'll get one of Saxnot's face, with their frequency rapidly increasing towards the end.
- My God, What Have I Done?: At the end, Thomasina deeply regrets her actions that led to the Downer Ending.
- Mysterious Purple: The dreams and strange visions that haunt Thomasina as she uncovers the mystery of what happened in the village of Bewlay 25 years ago and encounters the local supernatural forces in the process of doing so are usually bathed in an eerie purple light. It is also the ambient colour of the ruins beneath the titular barrow and the signature colour of the Big Bad, the Eldrich Abomination known as Abraxas Rex.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: The invitation Thomasina receives from Leonard Shoulder to excavate Hob's Barrow is a trick by Leonard and Lord Panswyck, cultists of the evil deity Abraxas Rex, to get her to undo the binding spell her father used to seal Abraxas Rex in the barrow. She completely falls for it, and releases Abraxas Rex into the world again, allowing the cultists to take over Bewlay. Even worse, Abraxas Rex possesses Thomasina, and she murders her father and two housemaids while under his influence, leading her to be committed to an insane asylum for the rest of her life. In the end, everyone would have been much better off had Thomasina just stayed in London.
- Nothing Is Scarier: The player never gets to see Abraxas Rex's true form. All they are get to see are Thomasina's wide-eyed horror at witnessing his "rebirth" and hear the noises and growls he makes.
- Ominous Fog: During Thomasina's first night in Bewlay, the town is blanketed by a thick, dense mist.
- Or Was It a Dream?: When Thomasina awakes after having a nightmare encounter with the goblin, her father's manuscript has suddenly appeared in her room, calling into question whether this was a dream at all. Subverted by later developments that suggest that the journal was planted there by Leonard Shoulder.
- Our Gods Are Different: Local landlord Lord Panswyck is renovating a chapel that once belonged to his ancestors, where he intends to worship God. Turns out it is not the Christian God, but a pagan deity named Abraxas Rex.
- Palm Bloodletting: Thomasina cuts her palm for the blood ritual to summon Abraxas.
- Sealed Evil in a Can: The deity Abraxas Rex apparently lived in the underground chambers for millennia, until Thomasina's father, using binding magic, trapped it down there.
- Solar and Lunar: A stone carving of a moon is seen hanging on a character's cottage and in front of another's manor. Lunar motifs also appear in the underground ruins beneath Hob's Barrow, as part of a puzzle.
- Strong Family Resemblance: Physically, Thomasina very much resembles her mother, except she has her father's bright blue eyes.
- Tomboyish Name: Downplayed. While Thomasina is a female name, it is more specifically the female version of the highly masculine name Thomas and probably comes across as somewhat antiquated, at least to a modern audience who are probably more familiar with its diminutive forms, such as Tamsin and Tammy. Thomasina, meanwhile, is quite masculine in her expression, especially for her time; outside of very much being a Daddy's Girl, she is also a woman who pursues an academic career and prefers wearing trousers over dresses.
- Town with a Dark Secret: Idyllic Bewlay, deep in the British moors, houses a local landmark known as Hob's Barrow, which is surrounded by mystery and considered by the locals to be a cursed place.
- Untrusting Community: Some of the residents treat Thomasina with indifference, even disdain since she is a foreigner who has come to disturb the local Hob's Barrow — against the residents' wishes.
- What Happened to the Mouse?: We never find out why Thomasina's assistant Kenneth was unable to join her in Bewlay, nor why her money was missing from the crate he sent.
