Harvester

About Harvester

Harvester was written and directed by Gilbert P. Austin and developed by DigiFX Interactive, and came out in North America in September 1996. Nightdive Studios and Atari now publish it on Steam, where it runs on Windows and Linux, and GOG sells it DRM-free running in DOSBox, with the manuals, a making-of, the soundtrack and a poster. Both stores sell it uncensored. The Steam page calls it the most violent adventure game of all time; the game is banned in Germany.

You play Steve Mason, an 18-year-old who wakes one morning in Harvest, a small Texas farming town, in 1953. He does not recognise his own mother or little brother, the townspeople answer his pleas for help as if nothing is wrong, and his fiancee next door, Stephanie, 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 sergeant at arms 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 hotspots, 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 since both of you have a limited amount of health, either of you can die. You can get through much of the game by solving its puzzles or by killing the people in your way.

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 broad, odd performances make the town feel like a bad copy of real life. The daily tasks start as petty vandalism and grow into theft and arson, and each one ends with someone dead. Blood and bodies are shown openly, and there is nudity and sexual content as well as violence. Much of it is played as dark satire about violence in games, and critics have been split: Metacritic's average is mixed, while Steam players rate it highly.

Next to other 90s live-action horror adventures, which mostly keep you in one haunted house, Harvester gives you a whole town of grotesques and makes you the one doing harm. It suits players who like old adventure games, live-action oddities and horror that is grotesque and uncomfortable rather than tense. One playthrough of the main story takes about seven hours by HowLongToBeat's count. 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 as easily as his opponent, so do not start one you do not need.
• Many problems can be solved with a puzzle or with violence; if you want to see more of the town, try the puzzle first.
• Keep an eye on what each day's task asks and who in town it involves before you act.
• The GOG release comes with the original manuals and a making-of, worth a look if you like the game's history.
• Expect graphic gore, nudity and sexual content; this is an adults-only game in tone.

Questions