There’s one thing timelessly scary about cornfields. Their impenetrable depth and intimidating top can rapidly disorient anybody who stumbles into one, leaving them determined to search out an exit path, and turning a easy subject of grain into the setting of a horror story. Villainous Video games leans into this common reality because the centerpiece of its people horror recreation, Harvest Hunt. Pitted towards a ceaseless monster hellbent on corrupting and consuming a village, it is the sport’s interlocking programs 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 speedy future. The deeper you get right into a harvest season, the upper the necessities and harder the duties could develop into. The sport leans into some mild deck-building parts like so many equally designed video games have as of late, however these playing cards are various enough–no matter in the event that they’re useful or detrimental–that they continue to be attention-grabbing after a number of hours of play.
Performed in first-person and offered with stylized visuals that borrow Uncommon’s no-straight-lines method paired with a country however comic-booky layer on prime of all of it, the temper is powerful. A foreboding night time sky hangs over the randomly generated farmlands, combining with the plethora of cornstalks, creaky footbridges, and uninviting ponds to kind an initially intriguing entire. It is a world that makes you are feeling unwelcome and disoriented, including a compelling creepiness to a recreation with a comparatively easy gameplay loop.
I solely wished these randomly generated maps had extra variable elements. Outdoors of the cornstalks and ponds, there are three key landmarks on every map, like an enormous, gangly tree and a haunting windmill by which the moonlight so stylishly cuts. However these locales aren’t supplemented with smaller, equally memorable websites to see from night time to nighttime, leaving me feeling like I would seen all of it earlier than although, on the identical time, I could not probably map the pathways. It is in some way dizzying and overly acquainted without delay.
In spirit, I likened Harvest Hunt to Slender, the once-viral and simplistic horror recreation that randomly spawned journal pages throughout dizzying maps as a ceaseless monster nipped at your heels. Harvest Hunt builds attention-grabbing card mechanics on prime of that, however its underlying substance is identical, or typically worse; the monster is stressed, however not like in Slender, they’re additionally fairly straightforward 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 top, you may typically see them coming from a distance, and when you may’t, there are methods of finding them, resembling putting a weathervane that factors towards the beast in actual time. I used to be typically in a position to crouch-walk very near the Devourer with out them recognizing me, and after they did, I might dash away and simply lose their tail as a rule. Worst of all, nevertheless, 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 would must wiggle free to attenuate the injury. As soon as I did squirm away, the sport appeared to offer me one thing like a cooldown the place I might 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 accumulating 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, Deadly Firm, however Harvest Hunt is performed solely solo and critical, and it would not have the scares to make up for that distinction. The sport even needs you to think about harming the beast to rework fragments of their physique into stockpiles of ambrosia, however they have been constantly straightforward sufficient to dodge that I by no means noticed the purpose. I all the time most popular taking part in stealthily and accumulating the important useful resource piece by piece. I respect the play-your-way method in concept, however discovered a method was clearly higher.
A lot essentially hangs on a horror recreation’s scare worth that I used to be oddly nonetheless impressed with Harvest Hunt for being attention-grabbing whilst its monstrous mascot is not. Performed as a horror recreation, it is moody however falls shy of its objectives. Performed as a roguelite initially, nevertheless, it fares significantly better. That is primarily as a result of the sport’s deck-building system gives constantly worthwhile obstacles and rewards. Every night time of a five-night run, you are given a brand new random profit and detriment, resembling having the ability to injury the beast with fewer hits or flip therapeutic gadgets into extra ambrosia when at full well being, but in addition 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 night time. Although the maps felt insufficiently various after the early hours and the monster by no means instilled the concern 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 short-term bonuses, known as strengths, night time after night time till a season ends, in addition to longer-lasting village fortifications that basically simply translate into extra strengths. In the meantime, the Devourer enjoys a single, constant characteristic every season, resembling leaving a path of poisonous gasoline of their wake.
Strengths and fortifications are chosen from totally different intervals, and selecting any card over the others provided to me turned laborious since they have been well-designed and would every make totally different facets of a run simpler, resembling permitting me to crouch-walk quicker versus increasing my hit level whole every time I would heal or making the act of therapeutic a quicker one. This gave me pause and compelled me to think about builds to counter what else the harvest season was already throwing at me. I might additionally commerce beginning HP for instruments across the map, which felt like an typically dangerous trade-off that I would nonetheless settle for.
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 typically 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 produce me to the brink (or past) of whole failure, thus resetting all of my progress.
In Harvest Hunt, the stakes are actual, however the scares aren’t. There’s pressure within the recreation, but it surely would not rise to the heights it needs to resulting from a central villain who cannot pull their weight. That locations a figurative ceiling over its greatest moments, but it surely does have brilliant spots. I respect its rustic, askew artwork type and interlocking roguelite programs, which give me an goal value searching down in a folk-horror world that at the least seems, and in some methods, performs, the half.
