Harvester

Release Date: November 4, 1996

Adventure, very brutal, singleplayer

91%

Steam

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A controversial horror/gore adventure game. You play the role of Steve, who has to remember who he is and what he does in a town that is broken to the limits of its capabilities.

The thing happens in the fifties in the small American town of Harvest. The main character of the game is a young man, who one beautiful day wakes up in his bed, not remembering who he is and what his name is. The local people, including alleged parents, claim that Steve will soon marry a girl from the neighborhood, Stephanie. The bride, like our visitor, also has an amnesia attack and sincerely doubts whether what is happening around her has any connection with reality. Steve, as befits a real man, has to find out what is really at stake here and what the mysterious brotherhood has to do with the matter, which has its seat exactly in the middle of the town.

This is the story of Harvester, a three-compact adventure in the horror/gore convention. The main area of activity will be the eponymous town and all the buildings in it. It is worth noting that although Harvest has only 51 inhabitants, there is a military base with long-range nuclear missiles, as well as a school, a butcher's shop, a TV studio, a police station, a fire brigade and a pile of other public buildings (quite a lot for such a small number of people). The user interface is easy to use, the usual "point & click", i.e. the cursor changes to the appropriate function depending on what we can do with the item or location. From time to time we will also have to fight, it is done with the right mouse button. Contrary to what you might think after reading the introduction above, the scenario of the game is really interesting and quite tense. Difficult and ingenuity demanding puzzles may be a little discouraged, but it is not worth giving in, because the action develops at a dizzying pace and every now and then surprises with unconventional solutions.

The visual setting is like this: on the one hand, decent backgrounds in high resolution, on the other hand, digitized characters from Harvest residents who are not delighted. During the conversation, only static images of the interlocutors are shown, and in addition, so tragic that it is better not to look at them at all. A very good impression is made by dark music, perfectly emphasizing the atmosphere of horror, almost tangible in the empty streets of the town. And now something about film interludes, which are quite a lot in the game. I understand that people expect controversy and undoubtedly a violent product sells better, but what the authors of Harvester have done is a human concept. Every now and then the player is attacked by unsavory gore scenes, in which a teacher punishes her charges with a baseball stick, a TV presenter disguises the inside of the still alive victim, and one of the inhabitants wriggles on the screen with an axe stuck in the skull. Not only that, they are so uglylyly realized that after some time they just start to laugh. The actors' performance also leaves a lot to be desired, most of them should have been shot at the place where they were shot....

Nice screenplay, beautiful music, average graphics and nightmare film interludes - that's how much we can say about Harvester in a nutshell. If you are an uncritical adventurous enthusiast, or a lover of gore Z class movies, this is the product for you. I advise others to avoid it from afar and take an interest in something much better, e.g. Phantasmagoria 2.

Please let us know if you have any comments or suggestions regarding this description.

Last updated on August 14, 2015

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