Harvester

From the depths of vaporware comes Harvester, designed by DigiFx and published by Merit Studios. Was it worth the wait? Harvester mixes both some nicely rendered graphics that create a truly eerie and unique atmosphere, some crazy characters, and some slightly dated looking full-motion video to create a game that is, well, definitely different. And for the most part it is fun, and that is what counts right?

You Always Were a Kidder, Steve

Steve is having one of those days. He wakes up and suddenly can't remember who he is. You've heard this one before, right? Steve has amnesia and wakes up in a world that is totally bizarre. It's like the 1950s from hell. Does he really belong here? Is this really how the world is, or has Steve woken up in some strange dimension called Harvest? Steve's problems only begin with the amnesia. He learns that is he is to get married in a few weeks, he finds his little brother sitting at the TV depicting a show that is a cross between the Lone Ranger and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and his dad is locked in the bedroom, moaning incessantly. Almost every resident of Harvest, and there are a lot of them, is equally as bizarre.

You'll also meet the paranoid, torso-less Colonel who maintains watch at the nuclear missle base (with the "button" firmly at his waist), the Wasp Woman who lives in an abandoned house filled with wasp nests, and the neighborhood firemen who have an affinity for the color pink. Much of the town's weirdness seems to be centered around a Lodge in the middle of town. The Lodge is an exclusive club, called the Order of the Harvest Moon. As the adventure progresses, Steve will become intimately knowledgeable about the Lodge and its inhabitants.

This is one of the plusses with Harvester. The characters are down right strange! Yeah, some of them go overboard (some, REALLY overboard), but you never really know what is going to happen next when you interact with a new character. The voice acting is above average, especially in the dialogue sequences. Move to the full motion video however, and you are graced with some of the cheesiest acting around. Which also, isn't terribly bad, because I don't think people will play and experience Harvester for its Academy Award winning thesbians. Think of Harvester as the Best Picture winner for B-movies.

Just Your Ordinary, Eerie Town..

Harvester plays like a typical third-person perspective graphic adventure, ala the King's Quest games and closely resembles the more recently released Darkseed II in presentation. The characters are digitized and superimposed onto the full screen, 3D rendered SVGA backdrops. The backgrounds are some of the best I have seen in a third-person adventure and maybe all adventures put together. A vibrant use of colors and extensive detail is put into every single background in the game. The use of detail in the backgrounds adds a great deal to the overall atmosphere of the town. The depiction of buildings, skyline, and even the cars, is downright eerie.

Mixed in with the static backdrops are many full motion video sequences and 3D rendered cutscenes. These run the spectrum from nicely done to very pixelated and grainy. Some seem to be relevant to the game and its progression, others seem to be included just to attempt to gross you out (of which it occasionally succeeds).

Another thing that adds to the atmosphere is the music and sound effects, both which are excellent. Entering a location you might hear some soft elevator type music, that sounds like it is being played off of an old style radio. This may not exactly sound too great, but inside the world of Harvester, it fits perfectly. The sound effects are also very good and like the music add to the overall feel of the game. For example, enter Harvest's school and you'll hear the students chanting and singing some song like they are zombies. Most sound effects are in perfect volume and pitch to give you the feel they are either just off in the distance or right near you. The only gripe about the music and sound effects is that the track repeats after a little while, so you'll begin to hear the same things over and over again.

Just Your Ordinary, Eerie Conversations..

The interface is pretty basic, your usual point-and-click. You roam the screen with your mouse searching for labelled hotspots. After locating the various hotspots, you can click you mouse to examine the object (or talk to the person). If you can pick up the object or operate the object, you'll be given that choice after you have examined it. "Operate" is the generic term Harvester uses for just about any action besides look, pick up, or talk. Sometimes it sounds pretty silly, especially when it says "Operate the Exit". Like your usual graphic adventure, there are many objects to pick up and use in different places to solve puzzles.

To solve the puzzles, you'll have to gather clues and hints. This is done by talking to the many strange inhabitants of Harvest. There is a lot of dialogue in this game, some might say too much. However, even though there is a lot of dialogue, I found it to be so bizarre that it kept my attention the entire time I was listening to each character. When you talk with a character, you select various keywords or subjects to talk about, such as "Harvest" or "Amnesia". By talking about these subjects, more keywords will pop up. In a new twist, there is an "Other" line where you can type in your own subject. I haven't found this to be entirely useful though, because most of the time I am just typing subjects that it presents you with, but have disappeared because you selected other subjects. Usually by typing a new subject, you'll be greeted with the typical "What are you talking about, Steve?".

Harvest Quest Meets Mortal Kombat

The puzzles in Harvest range from the usual obvious to the more difficult. One thing that makes the puzzles better are some alternate solutions to many of the games puzzles. However, it isn't entirely perfect. Once I had already completed a task and when I unknowningly went to try and complete that task again, it reacted like I never had done it before. A little design flaw that had no real bearing on the game or its outcome.

Harvester is seperated into days. Each day you'll have to solve a sort of "mini-quest". You have free reign of the town each day, navigation via a nicely done overhead map, so you can pretty much do whatever you want. Each day new conversations and items might pop up and often you'll get a sneak peek, or hint at a quest on an upcoming day. Because of the free reign of each day, these individual quests will take you awhile as you are exploring every location each day, but the actual number of puzzles is fairly small and I had myself wishing there was a little more to do with all the strange inhabitants.

One item that seperates Harvester from the usual adventure fare is the inclusion of combat sequences. Particularly in the last third of the game, Steve might find it required or useful to weild a weapon and defend himself against an attacking character. When I say useful, that is because you can attack many of the inhabitants of Harvest, even if they are just standing there. But be careful though, most often you'll get it a whole lot of trouble. As far as the combat sequences go, you arm a weapon from your inventory and have at it. No, this isn't Street Fighter II Turbo Edition or Battle Arena Toshinden. After the initial fun of watching innards and guts explode from bodies, you soon realize that combat is little more than two choppy, animated characters duking it out via frantic mouse clicking on your part.

Unfortunately, this is where the game sort of loses its fun factor. In the last third of the game, which takes place in the mysterious Lodge, the combat sequences are pretty much the name of the game. You'll find some interesting new weapons, but the combat still consists of mouse clicking and little more. There are some puzzles in the Lodge, which are good, but I found myself wishing I was back in the town of Harvest, interacting with the crazy characters and having more adventures with them.

Harvester is definitely one of the strangest games I have ever played, and it kept my interest all the way to the end, despite its somewhat lackluster final third chapter. Although most of the game is played for humor, very dark humor that is, it goes without saying that Harvester is definitely king of adventure game gore, so trust the mature rating on the package.

Well, so after all is said and done, was it worth the wait? Though it will be remembered for its long delay and its promise of over the top guts and gore, it doesn't take away from the fact that Harvester is a fun game that boasts some truly unusual scenes and dialogue mixed with some decent puzzles. My favorite line of the game, which pretty much sums up the entire world of Harvester is said by the town Sheriff. "You can't live without a spinal cord, son. There's nothing unnatural about that. Think I will have some more of that pie!".

Rating: 7/10
Doug Radcliffe (10/4/96)

Vital Statistics

486DX-33 (486-66 or Pentium recommended)
8 MB RAM (16 MB recommended)
SVGA (640x480x256-VESA)
DOS 5.0 or later (runs in Windows 3.1 or Windows 95)
30 MB swap file
Sound Blaster 8-bit/16-bit; & AWE32; Pro-Audio Spectrum 16; Microsoft sound system, and more.
2X CD-ROM drive (Quad speed recommended); MSCDEX drivers v.2.1 or greater; Microsoft compatible mouse (version 8.0 or greater)