Barrow Hill is a horror adventure game created in 2006 by independent developers Matt Clark & Shadow Tor Studios.

The game is set in the site of Barrow Hill, which is based on real geographical locations in Cornwall

Cornwall

Cornwall is a unitary authority and ceremonial county of England, within the United Kingdom. It is bordered to the north and west by the Celtic Sea, to the south by the English Channel, and to the east by the county of Devon, over the River Tamar. Cornwall has a population of , and covers an area of...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

.
Forced to spend a sinister night there, you will investigate what is happening to the local people and why an archeological dig, led by professor Conrad Morse, has created so much unrest and hostility among the local community. During your exploration you will discover the local legends and superstitions, while using modern electronic devices like PDAs, GPS and metal detector

Metal detector

A metal detector is a device which responds to metal that may not be readily apparent.The simplest form of a metal detector consists of an oscillator producing an alternating current that passes through a coil producing an alternating magnetic field...

s to unfold the mystery.

Structure

It is played as a classic first person "point and click" adventure, with the world being represented by pre-rendered, animated screens.
The adventure is based on a non linear structure, that gives the player a lot of freedom in exploring the environment and collecting clues, letting him solve the game at his or her own pace.

Reviews

Barrow Hill has received generally very positive reviews among specialized magazines and adventure game sites, praising the creepy atmosphere, the quality of both audiovisual aspects and the logical game structure. The game puzzles are considered to be very well integrated with the story and the environment, never seeming like artificial obstacles to the player. Only GameSpot, a game review site, gave it a "terrible" rating of 2.6 out of a possible 10. GameRankings.com, which averages reviews from various game review sites, gave the game a composite score of 71 percent out of a possible 100 as of Sept. 05, 2006.

http://www.adventuregamers.com/article/id,636 http://www.justadventure.com/reviews/Barrow%20Hill/BarrowHill.shtm
http://www.gamespot.com/pc/adventure/barrowhill/review.html
http://www.gamerankings.com/htmlpages2/925752.asp

External links

• Barrow Hill (Official site)
• Shadow Tor Studios (Developer site)