Harvester

A kind of twin game to "Dark Seed 2", that reflects on the many kinds of horror of gothic north america. Lots of surrealism, some not-so-good mechanics, but a memorable game and a wonderful unique experience.

This is one of the most bizarre games I've ever played in my life but it's also surprisingly good. Just a quick question, am I the only person who thinks that Steve looks eerily similar to Agent Dale Cooper in Twin Peaks, I mean it would be one thing if it was just the facial appearance but he even sounds like Dale Cooper not that I'm Complaining about That

Harvester is a well-made 2D point-and-click adventure that goes for a lot of things. It pokes fun at the USA of the 1950's, with all its apple pie, purity and skeletons in the closet... but the way it does this is by being acutely aware of many a horror cliche, told in the fever dream style of Twin Peaks and Kafka, with a touch of the X-Files. With that many thematical elements it's amazing how coherent the game manages to be. It could have easily been a mish-mash of cool ideas from various devs with no rhyme or reason to it. Yeah, and it's violent in the splatterhouse sort of way as well. Harvester has aged pretty well. The FMV bits aren't very high quality as such, but they're not amateurishly done and the acting is, especially for a game of this era, very good. It's also fine from a technical standpoint, although one might have to adjust Dosbox's CPU cycles in order to bypass a few minor glitches. The puzzles are the game's one weakness, but it feels unfair to put it that way, since there are multiple solutions available in numerous scenarios. Still, it's easy to find yourself stuck, because you failed to find that one small hotspot in a sea of dithered pixels. Or, because you discarded your previous course of action because you thought it didn't work, while you were doing the right thing but in a way the developers hadn't thought. (There's a day-night cycle that affects what actions are available to you; if you haven't picked up the correct items, you can't proceed. This is the biggest issue for many players, I understand.) All in all, it's a fine adventure game with a sinister and humorous atmosphere. If you like the aforementioned TV shows/authors, David Lynch or maybe the Residents, and aren't afraid to check a walkthrough every now and then, go for it!

When I explain this game to people I usually get strange looks from them. Play this game & you'll see why. It is a point & click adventure with a bloke named Steve who has amnesia. You go through the town of Harvest getting to know people & figuring out what the hell is going on. The game will keep you hooked from start to finish. I'd say the best part of the game is exploring the town of Harvest itself & doing the various tasks - I would have liked this part to have been longer. The conversations with the towns people are interesting to say the least. The combat in this game is a little dodgy but that's all part of its charm. I wish modern psych/horror games were as good as this.

Harvester is one of those games that surfed on the FMV wave. The FMV part extends to characters portraits, some ingame clips that trigger after an action and that's it, it's not very intrusive and thus the storeytelling is adapted to the video game genre instead of the opposite. The best way I can describe the game itself is a kinda satiric gorefest adventure with mostly a point & clic gameplay, puzzle solving and a bit of fighting. The plot involves Steve, a teenager who wakes up as an amnesiac in a retro 50's style town called Harvester. In order to progress, you have to perform various tasks which involves gradually severe infractions until you recover the whole truth at the end. Most of the characters you will encounter are caricatural, they also often lack of empathy or morals which results into some absurd and/or humorous situations where violence and various taboos are depicted into an unhibited way. That being said, for what it is, I find the writing good, each character has its moments and distinct personnality and they remain coherent in their behaviour throughout the game. The plot developement does a good job into keeping you interested about this town madness and finding some explanations to it. Harvester is quite reactive to your actions, each character will have its own little comment on the events, althought it doesn't much alter the main plot, that's a quite linear game. Puzzles are more about item seeking and pratictal logic, althought the latter parts of the game involve more unusual stuff. Fighting sequence can be laggy at times and you're also push backwards when you take damages, which can make some enemies tricky to beat with close range weapons. The reste of the gameplay mostly involves point & clic sequences, there are some tight spots but it does the job most of the time. Overall I think this a game with a strong personnality, the gameplay is much more conventional, a bit clunky at times but it does not distract you from the plot.