There’s one thing timelessly scary about cornfields. Their impenetrable depth and intimidating peak can rapidly 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 Video games leans into this common reality because the centerpiece of its folks horror recreation, Harvest Hunt. Pitted towards a ceaseless monster hellbent on corrupting and consuming a village, it is the sport’s interlocking techniques 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 turn into. 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 assorted 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.
Performed in first-person and introduced 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 evening sky hangs over the randomly generated farmlands, combining with the plethora of cornstalks, creaky footbridges, and uninviting ponds to kind an initially intriguing complete. It is a world that makes you’re 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 a large, gangly tree and a haunting windmill via which the moonlight so stylishly cuts. However these locales aren’t supplemented with smaller, equally memorable websites to see from evening to nighttime, leaving me feeling like I would seen all of it earlier than regardless that, on the similar time, I could not presumably 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 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 may typically see them coming from a distance, and when you may’t, there are methods of finding them, similar to inserting a weathervane that factors towards the beast in actual time. I used to be usually in a position to crouch-walk very near the Devourer with out them recognizing me, and once they did, I may dash away and simply lose their tail as a rule. Worst of all, nevertheless, is what occurs once 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 harm. As soon as 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 gathering sufficient provides to fulfill a selected 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 fully solo and critical, and it would not have the scares to make up for that distinction. The sport even desires you to contemplate harming the beast to rework fragments of their physique into stockpiles of ambrosia, however they have been constantly simple sufficient to dodge that I by no means noticed the purpose. I at all times most well-liked enjoying stealthily and gathering the very important useful resource piece by piece. I admire the play-your-way method in concept, however discovered a technique 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 targets. Performed as a roguelite before everything, nevertheless, it fares significantly better. That is primarily as a result of the sport’s deck-building system provides constantly worthwhile obstacles and rewards. Every evening of a five-night run, you are given a brand new random profit and detriment, similar to having the ability to harm the beast with fewer hits or flip therapeutic objects into further 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. Although the maps felt insufficiently assorted after the early hours and the monster by no means instilled the worry in me they have been meant to, I nonetheless loved attempting 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 actually simply translate into extra strengths. In the meantime, the Devourer enjoys a single, constant function every season, similar 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 exhausting since they have been well-designed and would every make completely different points of a run simpler, similar to 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 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 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 manner 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 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, nevertheless it would not rise to the heights it desires to on account of a central villain who cannot pull their weight. That locations a figurative ceiling over its greatest moments, nevertheless it does have vivid spots. I admire its rustic, askew artwork fashion and interlocking roguelite techniques, which give me an goal price searching down in a folk-horror world that a minimum of seems, and in some methods, performs, the half.
