The height of FMV entertainment
This review contains spoilers
5/5. Would anger half a man and nuke the world again anytime.
One of the things that really disturbed me about Harvester as a child was this one scene where a baby is sleeping in a crib and its eyes begin to pop out, and the mother is like "Oh, it's not as bad as it looks. Just pop them back in." and just something about it made me feel incredibly queezy. On the other hand, the scene itself has a strange satirical quality to it - and that's something which is pretty much present throughout the entirety of this game where it combines horror and comedy in a way that's really strange, disturbing but then also weirdly funny in a way.
There's something else about the heavily dated, predominantly FMV styled visuals playing in conjunction with deliberately dated 1950s idealist visuals which feels really memorable - and just something about it feeling so grotesquely dated just adds so much to the alien atmosphere that it creates, like peering into another world and you're just aware of it being strangely artificial and alien - lots of it comes down to how much this game is dependent on really cartoonish satirical caricatures.
It's janky as all hell, and I think some people have dismissed this as downright awful - but then there is a strange appeal to this game's storytelling and weirdly morbid sense of humour in conjunction with the grotesque violence of it, and there's definitely something about it which works. It very much forces you to confront violent content and the implications of it, and there's an explicit satire with cults manifesting themselves in suburbia and the connection that the player has with the game and what they see.
Also, the line "You always were a kidder, Steve." will get stuck in your head. It's repeated ad-nauseum throughout, and there's definitely something funny about Steve's dumb expression when he's watching all of these strange and disturbing events unfold - or when he's killed, for instance, by a legless veteran who mistakes you for a communist and shoots you but also accidentally triggers a nuclear apocalypse in the process.
There's something else about the heavily dated, predominantly FMV styled visuals playing in conjunction with deliberately dated 1950s idealist visuals which feels really memorable - and just something about it feeling so grotesquely dated just adds so much to the alien atmosphere that it creates, like peering into another world and you're just aware of it being strangely artificial and alien - lots of it comes down to how much this game is dependent on really cartoonish satirical caricatures.
It's janky as all hell, and I think some people have dismissed this as downright awful - but then there is a strange appeal to this game's storytelling and weirdly morbid sense of humour in conjunction with the grotesque violence of it, and there's definitely something about it which works. It very much forces you to confront violent content and the implications of it, and there's an explicit satire with cults manifesting themselves in suburbia and the connection that the player has with the game and what they see.
Also, the line "You always were a kidder, Steve." will get stuck in your head. It's repeated ad-nauseum throughout, and there's definitely something funny about Steve's dumb expression when he's watching all of these strange and disturbing events unfold - or when he's killed, for instance, by a legless veteran who mistakes you for a communist and shoots you but also accidentally triggers a nuclear apocalypse in the process.
one of the most unique experiences you can get from a game, loved every moment of this
Playing Harvester is like stumbling through a dense forest while blindfolded. You have no idea where you're going, but you keep stumbling and flying face first into tree bark on the way there. It's filled to the brim with nebulous goals, sudden fail states, and the most impenetrable puzzle logic ever put to games. I truly believe this game is a form of spiritual torture. Yet, something compelled me to press on until I'd finished it.
I can't quite put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was the characters, who feel like the Twin Peaks cast after having been run through a blender. It could have been the game's visuals, with all the strange uncanniness that comes with FMV games. I think above all else, it was just the idiosyncratic weirdness of this world that drew me into it.
Harvester is truly unlike anything else I've ever played, and likely anything I'll ever play again. It's so haphazard and uneven in its construction, but there's a strange charm to such an unbound Frankenstein of a video game.
Do I recommend it? Yes, absolutely yes. This is probably the worst game I've ever enjoyed, but I damn well enjoyed it.
I can't quite put my finger on what it was. Maybe it was the characters, who feel like the Twin Peaks cast after having been run through a blender. It could have been the game's visuals, with all the strange uncanniness that comes with FMV games. I think above all else, it was just the idiosyncratic weirdness of this world that drew me into it.
Harvester is truly unlike anything else I've ever played, and likely anything I'll ever play again. It's so haphazard and uneven in its construction, but there's a strange charm to such an unbound Frankenstein of a video game.
Do I recommend it? Yes, absolutely yes. This is probably the worst game I've ever enjoyed, but I damn well enjoyed it.
Harvester is one of the only video games with graphic child death AND freaky incest. it's dumb, edgy, and amazing. goofy, B-movie Americana in adorable FMV.
One of those games that could, with the right push, have become a Movement, a Thing, a Cultural Reset; but it's too bold, too daring, too fucking real, to be able to carry that burden. We absolutely need to bring back FMV games again.
''Now that came in handy as I gauged my progress. While I crawled from Germany to England, my intestines would unravel, such that every three miles I'd have to roll them back up and stuff them back in. It became my benchmark, what I lived for.''
''Now that came in handy as I gauged my progress. While I crawled from Germany to England, my intestines would unravel, such that every three miles I'd have to roll them back up and stuff them back in. It became my benchmark, what I lived for.''
The game every Japanese twin peaks rip off wishes it could be.
First disc is five star material but once enter the lodge it all goes downhill real fast and never recovers. That completely ruins the game from being anything but average at best imo
son acti al çöpe at güzel oyun
A direct response to the moral panic around violent video games, Harvester pulls no punches in asserting that the violence being blames on the games was, and is, endemic to American culture. Not even close to a perfect expression of that idea but the audacity of making this in the 90s is great. Also it's hilarious just watch a video or whatever
BRAZIL MENTIONED =)
Terrible video game but so campy it starts coming back around to "play it for the story" territory. I play it once a year. If you like campy horror you'll absolutely love this.
Great story, but the lodge is far too long and outstays its welcome.
Okay, I can’t in good conscience claim that Harvester has aged all that well — especially compared to some of its 90s adventure game contemporaries — but man, does it truly do a lot for a game from 1995. To me it’s loosely the true definition of a guilty pleasure: something I legitimately like and will defend, as opposed to, say, something I like ironically or something I like for how bad it is. It mostly just comes down to how Harvester feels like… honestly like nothing else I’ve played before. It’s prone to misfiring on some of its ideas, and there are major aspects of gameplay that… I’ll get to later, but as a whole it’s an absolutely fascinating game that, for an early adventure game, does feel ahead of its time in certain aspects and doesn’t have any other particular comparison point today.
You play as an (alleged) teenager who wakes up with absolutely no memory of who or where he is. Through interacting with your NPC family and following where they lead you, you get filled in — your name is Steve, you live in the beautiful small town of Harvest, and you’re scheduled to get married to your sweetheart Stephanie next week. However, upon visiting the bride-to-be, you find out that, like you, Stephanie is also an amnesiac, and the two of you realize that there is something deeply up with the town of Harvest. To try and solve its mysteries, and to try and find a way out for you and Stephanie, you decide to investigate The Order of the Harvest Moon: an exclusive club that the town of Harvest seems to revolve around, and, as you attempt to join so you can enter the building, Steve finds himself participating in trials built to tear the town apart, and test just how far he can go over the edge.
And I’d just love to state how immensely I love this game’s vibe. Nearly every NPC you meet gives off the aura, of, like, some person who sits next to you on the bus who won’t stop talking about the weirdest shit who you wanna try and humour at first even though you’re a bit uncomfortable but who rapidly brings the conversation to bad territory to the point where you wanna get away from them as soon as possible and it really helps to give this game this surreal, disturbing… but also fun vibe, in a black-comedy sort of way. There are people who come off more relatively normal… but your actions either drive them away or show them to be as off-kilter as the rest of the town — which does an excellent job at making things escalate through the game and showing the effect of what you’re doing. This all seems to have an end goal of satirizing 50s small-town America and exposing what's beneath the idyllic exterior, and to that end, I think it works. While there are beats that I wish had more thought put into them (I preferred stuff like the firefighters over ‘all the natives are drunk and homeless’) I… genuinely liked figuring out what the game was going for thematically, and combined with generally sharp and fun writing nearly across the board, this game… very much delivers, story wise.
And for an adventure game released in the 90s, it’s also surprisingly functional! It manages to avoid a lot of the general trappings of the time (ways to render the game unbeatable, puzzles working on insane trains of logic, more items than you actually ever use) to create a functional and enjoyable experience based more on interaction and exploration than anything else. I also like how typical RPG/adventure game conventions get subverted — instead of doing quests to make others happy and make the town a better place, what you do in Harvester instead has adverse effects, harming people and tearing the town apart at an escalating level that directly calls into question what exactly it is you’re doing. There’s also combat! It’s… exactly as clunky and rough as you would expect for combat in a 90s adventure game, but it’s… at least kind of funny in its application and it’s only ever required once or twice so I could kind of shrug it aside as something that contributed to the game’s charm…
…Until you reach the Lodge — the base of the Order of the Harvest Moon, and where you spend the last third-ish of the game. It’s… honestly one of the worst things I've ever had to endure? The once thankfully-infrequent combat is now constant, with the final challenge before the ending putting you through ten arduous and clunky combat encounters back to back without any sort of break or ability to recoup. There’s now an element of resource management in play in terms of healing and ammo… but the game doesn’t give you nearly enough to deal with what it dishes out and you have absolutely no sense of when, exactly, you’re going to get more or when you’re actually reaching the end of the trek. The writing also takes a dip here: the game loses its ability to teeter the line between vaguely-possible-person and insane mouthpiece as constant new characters appear on the spot to monologue about the ills of society before trying to shoot you. This all leads up to a final reveal which… discards the narrative the game was pushing towards all for a whole new narrative which doesn’t really link up with what was going on before. There’s… a certain sense of amusement to be had in wondering what weird thing you’re going to see next, but it feels so… slapdash compared to what the game had been going for earlier, and gameplay-wise it’s just so unpleasant that it’s hard to glean any sort of fun out of it. The first time I played through I was caught completely unprepared and was just so shocked at how hard a drop it was compared to everything before it — and while I was able to go through it a lot more smoothly this time since I knew what was happening… god, what a miserable way to end the game.
But I still, at least, really like most everything that happens up until that point. Even with the presence of really bad, awful combat, and even with the spectre of The Lodge tainting the last third of the game… I still think Harvester’s a fun time! With fun, snappy writing that truly runs right up to the line between horror and black comedy, and with some… simple but fun adventure game design that turns the structure of ‘do puzzles and quests to make everything better’ completely on its head, Harvester is a guilty pleasure that despite… many issues I think holds up and is still somewhat incomparable today. 7/10.
You play as an (alleged) teenager who wakes up with absolutely no memory of who or where he is. Through interacting with your NPC family and following where they lead you, you get filled in — your name is Steve, you live in the beautiful small town of Harvest, and you’re scheduled to get married to your sweetheart Stephanie next week. However, upon visiting the bride-to-be, you find out that, like you, Stephanie is also an amnesiac, and the two of you realize that there is something deeply up with the town of Harvest. To try and solve its mysteries, and to try and find a way out for you and Stephanie, you decide to investigate The Order of the Harvest Moon: an exclusive club that the town of Harvest seems to revolve around, and, as you attempt to join so you can enter the building, Steve finds himself participating in trials built to tear the town apart, and test just how far he can go over the edge.
And I’d just love to state how immensely I love this game’s vibe. Nearly every NPC you meet gives off the aura, of, like, some person who sits next to you on the bus who won’t stop talking about the weirdest shit who you wanna try and humour at first even though you’re a bit uncomfortable but who rapidly brings the conversation to bad territory to the point where you wanna get away from them as soon as possible and it really helps to give this game this surreal, disturbing… but also fun vibe, in a black-comedy sort of way. There are people who come off more relatively normal… but your actions either drive them away or show them to be as off-kilter as the rest of the town — which does an excellent job at making things escalate through the game and showing the effect of what you’re doing. This all seems to have an end goal of satirizing 50s small-town America and exposing what's beneath the idyllic exterior, and to that end, I think it works. While there are beats that I wish had more thought put into them (I preferred stuff like the firefighters over ‘all the natives are drunk and homeless’) I… genuinely liked figuring out what the game was going for thematically, and combined with generally sharp and fun writing nearly across the board, this game… very much delivers, story wise.
And for an adventure game released in the 90s, it’s also surprisingly functional! It manages to avoid a lot of the general trappings of the time (ways to render the game unbeatable, puzzles working on insane trains of logic, more items than you actually ever use) to create a functional and enjoyable experience based more on interaction and exploration than anything else. I also like how typical RPG/adventure game conventions get subverted — instead of doing quests to make others happy and make the town a better place, what you do in Harvester instead has adverse effects, harming people and tearing the town apart at an escalating level that directly calls into question what exactly it is you’re doing. There’s also combat! It’s… exactly as clunky and rough as you would expect for combat in a 90s adventure game, but it’s… at least kind of funny in its application and it’s only ever required once or twice so I could kind of shrug it aside as something that contributed to the game’s charm…
…Until you reach the Lodge — the base of the Order of the Harvest Moon, and where you spend the last third-ish of the game. It’s… honestly one of the worst things I've ever had to endure? The once thankfully-infrequent combat is now constant, with the final challenge before the ending putting you through ten arduous and clunky combat encounters back to back without any sort of break or ability to recoup. There’s now an element of resource management in play in terms of healing and ammo… but the game doesn’t give you nearly enough to deal with what it dishes out and you have absolutely no sense of when, exactly, you’re going to get more or when you’re actually reaching the end of the trek. The writing also takes a dip here: the game loses its ability to teeter the line between vaguely-possible-person and insane mouthpiece as constant new characters appear on the spot to monologue about the ills of society before trying to shoot you. This all leads up to a final reveal which… discards the narrative the game was pushing towards all for a whole new narrative which doesn’t really link up with what was going on before. There’s… a certain sense of amusement to be had in wondering what weird thing you’re going to see next, but it feels so… slapdash compared to what the game had been going for earlier, and gameplay-wise it’s just so unpleasant that it’s hard to glean any sort of fun out of it. The first time I played through I was caught completely unprepared and was just so shocked at how hard a drop it was compared to everything before it — and while I was able to go through it a lot more smoothly this time since I knew what was happening… god, what a miserable way to end the game.
But I still, at least, really like most everything that happens up until that point. Even with the presence of really bad, awful combat, and even with the spectre of The Lodge tainting the last third of the game… I still think Harvester’s a fun time! With fun, snappy writing that truly runs right up to the line between horror and black comedy, and with some… simple but fun adventure game design that turns the structure of ‘do puzzles and quests to make everything better’ completely on its head, Harvester is a guilty pleasure that despite… many issues I think holds up and is still somewhat incomparable today. 7/10.
Un po' una merda ma fa ridere, niente di così male. La prima parte è molto divertente, anche se lascia molto a desiderare. La seconda è proprio un casino di merda immondo
you always were a kidder steve
if I played this when I was 16 it wouldve been in my top 5
Im sorry but no. Harvester is not a good game. Is it memorable, weird, freaky and uniquely brain-scarring? Yes. Sadly its also buggy, clunky and just not fun to play, be it plodding through illogical and outright frustrating puzzle design or battling through clunky combat.
It doesn't help that the game completely gives up halfway through and shuts down all exploration and instead just places you in battle rooms for the rest of the game. Just watch a playthrough on youtube for the weirdness and find a better adventure game to play.
It doesn't help that the game completely gives up halfway through and shuts down all exploration and instead just places you in battle rooms for the rest of the game. Just watch a playthrough on youtube for the weirdness and find a better adventure game to play.
I played this game knowing next to nothing about it with a couple of friends watching and its insane. Every time I thought I had seen everything It threw something else at me. The puzzles make no sense, the acting is shit and the combat is horrible but if I could go into this game blind again I would do so in a heartbeat.
Also features the best dialogue of any video game (spoilers): https://youtu.be/AnSCw3kp3_E?t=14598
Also features the best dialogue of any video game (spoilers): https://youtu.be/AnSCw3kp3_E?t=14598
This was such a trip, just play it, please...
The puzzles in this are needlessly obtuse and it's basically unplayable without a guide, but no other game has an atmosphere quite like this, using the unsettling uncanny valley nature of FMV games to its advantage in creating a black comedy folk-horror that pokes fun at the zeitgeist of the 90s and ultimately the moral panic around video games.
Had Harvester come out today, it'd be another indie game trying to be weird for the sake of being weird and I'd ignore it without another thought, but having come out in the mid-90s adds another layer of weird that's probably the biggest curiosity the game has to offer.
As a game and not a relic from the 90s, Harvester is not very good. The puzzles aren't great, the things you do to advance the plot don't make sense even in the game's context and the last third just drags on unnecessarily. The individual characters, the voice acting and FMVs are entertaining, but that's about it.
As a game and not a relic from the 90s, Harvester is not very good. The puzzles aren't great, the things you do to advance the plot don't make sense even in the game's context and the last third just drags on unnecessarily. The individual characters, the voice acting and FMVs are entertaining, but that's about it.
Harvester isn't a particularly well made game, it isn't even a particularly clever game. It is however, unlike anything else. It is without a doubt a product of it's time, something that likely cannot be imitated in any meaningful form.
As a game, Harvester is an alright point and click adventure. It's puzzles are a bit too obtuse at times and the second half focuses too heavily on it's clunky combat mechanics.
As an experience, Harvester is unmissable. It has an unapparelled atmosphere, hilariously dark humor and some of my favorite moments in the entire video game medium.
As a game, Harvester is an alright point and click adventure. It's puzzles are a bit too obtuse at times and the second half focuses too heavily on it's clunky combat mechanics.
As an experience, Harvester is unmissable. It has an unapparelled atmosphere, hilariously dark humor and some of my favorite moments in the entire video game medium.
Incredible atmosphere, but probably best experienced as a longplay (which is how I experienced it). My rating reflects this, because if I had to deal with the lodge section myself it would probably be bumped down significantly.
What is Harvester? Harvester is a huge piece of sh¡t. Seriously! what's up with people pretending some of these kusoges are actually "underrated" gems? This barely passed as a game when it was released and it sure as hell does not meet the standards today.
The story is non-sensensical, it keeps adding stuff as it goes on to pretend being "mysterious" when it's actually the laziest writing you can come across. The NPCs are quirky and kinda interesting but most don't have any real weight in the story and the funny factor wears out after 10 minutes of roaming around with this game's ugly controls. Some people say the game is strong until you get access to the endgame but that's bullsh*t, the game is crap since you press play on the Steam app.
Visually this is repulsive. Not only it features bad FMV and hilariously noticeable green-screens, also all the scenarios are flat and you can barely tell what's interactive and what's decorative, not to mention the cursor's area of effect is so small you sometimes have to be pixel perfect while clicking to activate or grab something.
To top it off this game has combat, which mostly revolves around being lucky with the horrible hit detection and landing more blows than the enemies. Sometimes you can be hit while being away from whoever is attacking you at the moment, which can trigger frustration levels you never thought possible.
If you're a real masochist (like me) or have real interest in edgy games that tried to push some boundaries while drowning themselves in their own liquid farts, suit yourself. Otherwise don't waste your money.
The story is non-sensensical, it keeps adding stuff as it goes on to pretend being "mysterious" when it's actually the laziest writing you can come across. The NPCs are quirky and kinda interesting but most don't have any real weight in the story and the funny factor wears out after 10 minutes of roaming around with this game's ugly controls. Some people say the game is strong until you get access to the endgame but that's bullsh*t, the game is crap since you press play on the Steam app.
Visually this is repulsive. Not only it features bad FMV and hilariously noticeable green-screens, also all the scenarios are flat and you can barely tell what's interactive and what's decorative, not to mention the cursor's area of effect is so small you sometimes have to be pixel perfect while clicking to activate or grab something.
To top it off this game has combat, which mostly revolves around being lucky with the horrible hit detection and landing more blows than the enemies. Sometimes you can be hit while being away from whoever is attacking you at the moment, which can trigger frustration levels you never thought possible.
If you're a real masochist (like me) or have real interest in edgy games that tried to push some boundaries while drowning themselves in their own liquid farts, suit yourself. Otherwise don't waste your money.
An absolute atrocity. I love it.
This game is BAD. Extremely bad. But it was also extremely entertaining. Playing through this on stream while drinking was one of the all-time highlights of my stream. Ridiculously campy acting and writing, and the puzzles were super stupid. But it was still hella fun. If you play this, bring a guide, and preferrably bring an audience.
A escrita é boa?
Não muito?
Personagens bem desenvolvidos?
Não
Os efeitos especiais são bem feitos?
Nem um pouco
Eu gostei?
Demais
Único defeito que afetou realmente meu divertimento enquanto jogava, foi na reta final do jogo dentro do lodge o jogo acabar dando um foco grande demais pro combate merda dele.
Mas a atmosfera do jogo realmente é o que fez eu gostar tanto, mas eu também gosto de uma porrada de slasher merdão então talvez eu que tenha mal gosto?
Não muito?
Personagens bem desenvolvidos?
Não
Os efeitos especiais são bem feitos?
Nem um pouco
Eu gostei?
Demais
Único defeito que afetou realmente meu divertimento enquanto jogava, foi na reta final do jogo dentro do lodge o jogo acabar dando um foco grande demais pro combate merda dele.
Mas a atmosfera do jogo realmente é o que fez eu gostar tanto, mas eu também gosto de uma porrada de slasher merdão então talvez eu que tenha mal gosto?
Definitiv ein FMV-Horror-Klassiker, der einiges an Gore bietet, dabei aber keine klassischen Horror-Elemente hat.
Zum Großteil waren die Zwischenszenen extrem kurz und hatten oft nur mittelmäßig gute Effekte, der "Wille" war jedoch vorhanden. Das Echtzeit-Kampfsystem war für ein Spiel dieser Art überraschend gut umgesetzt und es gab viele Waffen zu finden.
Wenn man auf Full-Motion-Video-Spiele à la Phantasmagoria steht, empfehle ich dieses Spiel auf jeden Fall, wobei hier mehr Gore, aber leider weniger Qualität zu sehen ist.
Nachtrag: Das Spiel nimmt sich außerdem nicht immer ernst, wofür möglicherweise der wirklich hanebüchene Plot verantwortlich ist. Einen zweiten Teil würde ich der Absurdität und des Twists am Ende wegen jedoch sehr begrüßen, wobei es wohl nie dazu kommen wird. Interesse hat bei mir zuerst nur die Indizierung des Titels geweckt, also vielen Dank, liebe BPjS!
Zum Großteil waren die Zwischenszenen extrem kurz und hatten oft nur mittelmäßig gute Effekte, der "Wille" war jedoch vorhanden. Das Echtzeit-Kampfsystem war für ein Spiel dieser Art überraschend gut umgesetzt und es gab viele Waffen zu finden.
Wenn man auf Full-Motion-Video-Spiele à la Phantasmagoria steht, empfehle ich dieses Spiel auf jeden Fall, wobei hier mehr Gore, aber leider weniger Qualität zu sehen ist.
Nachtrag: Das Spiel nimmt sich außerdem nicht immer ernst, wofür möglicherweise der wirklich hanebüchene Plot verantwortlich ist. Einen zweiten Teil würde ich der Absurdität und des Twists am Ende wegen jedoch sehr begrüßen, wobei es wohl nie dazu kommen wird. Interesse hat bei mir zuerst nur die Indizierung des Titels geweckt, also vielen Dank, liebe BPjS!