Harvester

About Harvester

Harvester was written and directed by Gilbert P. Austin and developed by DigiFX Interactive, and came out in 1996 for MS-DOS. Nightdive Studios brought it to Steam in 2014, where it runs on Windows and Linux, and it is also sold on GOG. The Steam page calls it the most violent adventure game of all time, and it was made to shock.

You play Steve Mason, who wakes one morning in Harvest, a small Texas farm town in 1953. He does not recognise his own mother or little brother, the townspeople treat him as if nothing is wrong, and his fiancee, who lives next door, has lost her memory too. Everyone points him to the Lodge of the Order of the Harvest Moon, the organisation that runs the town, and its man at the door sets Steve a task each day as part of his initiation.

You play by pointing and clicking. An overhead map takes you to each place in town; you speak to people, click on what catches your eye, collect items and use them to move the story on. There is also a simple fight system: pick a weapon and click on someone, and either of you can die.

The horror is in how wrong everything is. The rooms are low-resolution renders, the people are real actors filmed on video and cut into them, and their performances are broad and odd, which makes the town feel like a bad copy of real life. What the cult asks of Steve starts small and ends in deaths, the game shows blood and bodies openly, and there is sexual content as well as violence. It is as much a dark satire about violence as a frightening game, and its strangeness is the point.

It suits players who like 90s adventure games, live-action oddities and horror that is grotesque and uncomfortable rather than tense. Players who want a modern survival horror game, or who are put off by graphic and sexual content, should look elsewhere.

How to play Harvester

1. Explore Steve's house and talk to his family to learn how things stand in Harvest.
2. Use the overhead map to travel to places in town and click on people and objects to talk and look.
3. Pick up items and use them on people or places to complete each task the Lodge sets you.
4. When a fight starts, choose a weapon from your inventory and click on your opponent, watching both health bars.
5. Follow the tasks day by day until you are invited into the Lodge, and solve the puzzles of its rooms.

Tips

• Talk to everyone more than once; the townspeople's odd remarks often point to the next item or place.
• Fights can kill Steve, so do not pick one you do not need.
• Keep an eye on what each day's task asks and who in town it involves before you act.
• Expect graphic gore and sexual content; this is an adults-only game in tone.

Questions