Harvest Hunt Review – Running In Crop Circles

There’s one thing timelessly scary about cornfields. Their impenetrable depth and intimidating peak can shortly disorient anybody who stumbles into one, leaving them determined to seek out an exit path, and turning a easy discipline of grain into the setting of a horror story. Villainous Games leans into this common fact because the centerpiece of its folks horror sport, Harvest Hunt. Pitted towards a ceaseless monster hellbent on corrupting and consuming a village, it is the sport’s interlocking methods that make it worthwhile, even when the creature leaves one thing to be desired.In Harvest Hunt, you are tasked with amassing sufficient ambrosia over five-night-long runs to safe your village’s instant future. The deeper you get right into a harvest season, the upper the necessities and more durable the duties could turn out to be. The sport leans into some mild deck-building components like so many equally designed video games have as of late, however these playing cards are different enough–no matter in the event that they’re helpful or detrimental–that they continue to be attention-grabbing after a number of hours of play.Played in first-person and introduced with stylized visuals that borrow Rare’s no-straight-lines method paired with a country however comic-booky layer on high of all of it, the temper is robust. A foreboding evening sky hangs over the randomly generated farmlands, combining with the plethora of cornstalks, creaky footbridges, and uninviting ponds to type an initially intriguing entire. It’s a world that makes you’re feeling unwelcome and disoriented, including a compelling creepiness to a sport with a comparatively easy gameplay loop.There’s one thing timelessly scary about cornfields.I solely wished these randomly generated maps had extra variable elements. Outside of the cornstalks and ponds, there are three key landmarks on every map, like a large, gangly tree and a haunting windmill via which the moonlight so stylishly cuts. But these locales aren’t supplemented with smaller, equally memorable websites to see from evening to nighttime, leaving me feeling like I’d seen all of it earlier than despite the fact that, on the similar time, I could not probably map the pathways. It’s one way or the other dizzying and overly acquainted without delay.In spirit, I likened Harvest Hunt to Slender, the once-viral and simplistic horror sport that randomly spawned journal pages throughout dizzying maps as a ceaseless monster nipped at your heels. Harvest Hunt builds attention-grabbing card mechanics on high of that, however its underlying substance is identical, or typically worse; the monster is stressed, however not like in Slender, they’re additionally fairly simple to evade.The Devourer stands two or thrice taller than the participant character, with a peculiarly spherical shadowy physique sporting inexperienced sores however not a lot else. Given their peak, you possibly can typically see them coming from a distance, and when you possibly can’t, there are methods of finding them, corresponding to inserting a weathervane that factors towards the beast in actual time. I used to be usually capable of crouch-walk very near the Devourer with out them recognizing me, and after they did, I may dash away and simply lose their tail most of the time. Worst of all, nonetheless, is what occurs after they’d catch up: They’d seize me and instantly deplete a portion of my well being, forcing me right into a easy button-mashing minigame the place I’d have to wiggle free to attenuate the injury. Once I did squirm away, the sport appeared to present me one thing like a cooldown the place I may escape to cover once more, resetting the creature’s pursuit again to its unalerted state. All of that is to say, the Devourer is not scary.This loop of dodging the monster whereas amassing sufficient provides to satisfy a specific quota by run’s finish is not not like that which you’d see within the hilarious-but-scary horror du jour, Lethal Company, however Harvest Hunt is performed solely solo and severe, and it does not have the scares to make up for that distinction. The sport even needs you to contemplate harming the beast to rework fragments of their physique into stockpiles of ambrosia, however they have been persistently simple sufficient to dodge that I by no means noticed the purpose. I at all times most well-liked enjoying stealthily and amassing the important useful resource piece by piece. I recognize the play-your-way method in concept, however discovered a method was clearly higher.By making use of buffs and nerfs in each spherical, new methods may emerge, however it doesn’t matter what, I did not see the purpose in combating the monster.So a lot essentially hangs on a horror sport’s scare worth that I used to be oddly nonetheless impressed with Harvest Hunt for being attention-grabbing whilst its monstrous mascot is not. Played as a horror sport, it is moody however falls shy of its targets. Played as a roguelite at first, nonetheless, it fares significantly better. This is especially as a result of the sport’s deck-building system provides persistently worthwhile obstacles and rewards. Each evening of a five-night run, you are given a brand new random profit and detriment, corresponding to having the ability to injury the beast with fewer hits or flip therapeutic objects into extra ambrosia when at full well being, but additionally affected by results just like the Devourer’s stationary “fiends” calling out your location extra simply, or turning all waters, even small puddles, into poisonous baths.I loved the best way these performed off one another and altered my method for every evening. Though the maps felt insufficiently different after the early hours and the monster by no means instilled the worry in me they have been meant to, I nonetheless loved making an attempt to finish runs as they grew to be extra oppressive with more and more unbelievable quotas.As you maintain a run, you may additionally pile on non permanent bonuses, referred to as strengths, evening after evening till a season ends, in addition to longer-lasting village fortifications that basically simply translate into extra strengths. Meanwhile, the Devourer enjoys a single, constant characteristic every season, corresponding to leaving a path of poisonous gasoline of their wake.Strengths and fortifications are chosen from completely different intervals, and selecting any card over the others supplied to me turned onerous since they have been well-designed and would every make completely different points of a run simpler, corresponding to permitting me to crouch-walk quicker versus increasing my hit level complete every time I’d heal or making the act of therapeutic a quicker one. This gave me pause and compelled me to contemplate builds to counter what else the harvest season was already throwing at me. I may additionally commerce beginning HP for instruments across the map, which felt like an usually dangerous trade-off that I’d nonetheless settle for.The foreboding world is comic-booky and rustic without delay.These many overlapping and typically stacking results ensured that in seven hours of play, I by no means explored the setting in the identical means twice. I used to be usually determined to flee with my life and ambrosia not due to the monster, however due to these different hazards that may deplete my HP and convey me to the brink (or past) of complete failure, thus resetting all of my progress.In Harvest Hunt, the stakes are actual, however the scares aren’t. There is stress within the sport, nevertheless it does not rise to the heights it needs to because of a central villain who cannot pull their weight. That locations a figurative ceiling over its finest moments, nevertheless it does have shiny spots. I recognize its rustic, askew artwork model and interlocking roguelite methods, which give me an goal price looking down in a folk-horror world that at the least seems, and in some methods, performs, the half.