Harvest Hunt, as a concept, is amazing. You and an eldritch fiend are stuck playing a game of cat and mouse in a world where the rules constantly change. Sometimes lady luck will favor you and you'll be chasing it with an axe while laughing maniacally, and other times you'll be forced to trudge through a poisonous swamp of sadness and suffering. Usually you'll find yourself somewhere in the middle, but the extremes are definitely where the concept truly shines.

Unfortunately, a concept is all that Harvest Hunt really is. With only one monster, one location and one objective, it takes only a couple of hours to thoroughly explore everything it has to offer. The various roguelike elements do their best to keep things fresh, but there's only so many ways you can remix the duel against Blobbimus Bloo, the Amorphous Blob of Evil before the tension goes away and you start thinking up stupid names for the thing you're supposed to be running away from.

So if you're curious about where Harvest Hunt succeeds, as well as where it stumbles and falls flat on its face, allow me to share with you my thoughts after spending so much time running through an accursed swamp that I now consider Blighttown a vacation destination.

Video version of this review (~13 minutes)

The nightmare begins

Harvest Hunt's premise is very simple. You have to venture into the ailing village of Luna Nova five nights in a row in order to collect vast quantities of Ambrosia - a magical, life-giving herb. Much like flower picking in real life, your journey will not be an easy one as not only will the land itself rise against you, but you'll also be constantly hounded by a demonic apparition that seems to exist purely to make you suffer.

To succeed you'll need to sneak through the decrepit swampland, avoid the monster's gaze whenever possible, and collect as much Ambrosia as you can before being forced to flee the village for the night. And if you're feeling particularly brave, or more likely desperate, you can also attempt to banish the abomination in order to get a hefty bonus.

Doing so is no easy task, however, as usually you'll have to wound the creature three times before you can attempt to banish it. And as you would expect, good weapons and tools are somewhat hard to come by in a wretched swamp! So if you want any cool toys to play around with, you'll need to first purchase them in the preparation phase before each night. The prices are absolutely killer though, by which I mean you'll have to sacrifice large amounts of your own health in order to get anything!

No pain, no gain!

Purchasing even a couple of items can leave you on death's door, and to make matters worse you don't even get to start with the tools in your inventory! Instead, you'll have to go to marked locations in order to pick them up, some of which can be on the opposite end of the map. So while you can regenerate health in a variety of different ways, getting geared up is always a massive risk, as well as a very stressful experience since suddenly every odd bit of noise can be a potential harbinger of doom.

That said, the health loss is also a very satisfying problem to overcome as beating the odds and getting geared up lets you transition from being the prey to being the hunter. With an axe in hand you no longer need to cling to the dank reeds for safety. You can go on the offensive, lure the monster into traps, and with a bit of effort perhaps even banish it for the night! That part is my favorite as watching the monster flee in abject terror after the banishing ritual has never failed to paint an evil grin on my face. Sometimes, a little bit of righteous vengeance is all you really need!

Once banished, little splotches of color will guide you to the monster's location

A strange but effective mix

Things get even more interesting once the roguelike elements get introduced. Each night you'll receive new cards, some of which you'll get to keep for the duration of the run, and some of which are only going to be active for that one specific night. These range from relatively minor upgrades that don't impact much to absolutely gigantic buffs that can grant you things like silent running, regenerating health or even complete immunity to some obstacles.

The same applies to the bad cards you'll also draw every single night. These can be mild annoyances like reduced healing or a more observant minions, as well as downright hellish effects that can drastically change the entire map and how you approach it. For example, one card can turn the water poisonous... in a swamp! Once this effect is active, it's no longer a question of whether you'll be able to collect enough Ambrosia to make your quota, but rather if you're even going to survive the night. After all, being confined to only thin, rickety pathways is not exactly conducive to long-term living when you're being stalked by a murder-blob.

Nothing is quite as welcoming as a river of blood next to a decaying church

While the major effects like the poisonous water change every single night, a collection of your favorite personal buffs can be carried over from mission to mission. This is great fun because it lets you craft and enjoy a variety of powerful builds, though sadly all this power does come at a rather hefty cost - the difficulty. Once you've done a couple of runs and acquired a solid selection of upgrades, it can become almost impossible to lose. Even when you consider that the monster can teleport near you if you ever get too far away, it simply can't do anything to you once you get some of the busted effects like health regeneration or silent running.

So while I do like the concept, and especially how much some negative effects can twist the usual gameplay formula, the whole thing needs a bit more balancing. Maybe the fiend should get more positive cards of its own - cards that stick around and make it so the threat becomes more and more serious with each passing night, with the goal being to counterbalance your own powering up. Poor Mr. Blobbimus really does need the help!

Sometimes even negative effects can end up being irrelevant because of how strong a single card is

Can a blob be truly scary?

On the other hand, the presentation is great and I wouldn't change anything about it. In my eyes, the most important aspect of any horror game is atmosphere, and this is something Harvest Hunt has in spades. While the visuals might not be high fidelity, they have a very grainy and unsettling quality to them. Even the lights, something that you'd expect to be your stalwart ally in a horror game, just feel... wrong, but in a good way!

The real star, however, is the audio design. I especially have to commend Harvest Hunt here for giving each surface a unique sound effect, with my favorite example being the transition from water to mud to land which feels and sounds remarkably lifelike. This sort of thing very quickly made me hyper aware of just how much noise I was making sloshing through the water, as well as how loud of a dinner bell I was ringing whenever I tried to run across creaking bridges. As such, I felt constantly on edge, even when the monster wasn't around!

All of this is then amplified by a lantern system that's seemingly inspired by the Amnesia series. In other words, you need the light in order to prevent yourself from going insane and slathering motor oil all over your screen, yet you also can't overindulge in using your lantern because it's a shining beacon of light that the monster can use to track you down. Unlike Amnesia the lantern is infinite, though you do go bananas quite quickly when it's turned off, so it does still encourage careful play and a lot of sneaking around, which I do appreciate. 

Despite the simple visuals, Harvest Hunt has a lot of charm to it

These things combined give Harvest Hunt a truly impressive atmosphere... all the way until you realize that the monster is neither scary nor much of a threat. It looks like an amorphous blob with a mask glued to its face, and while the few tidbits of lore you can unlock give it some extra depth, I couldn't help but treat Mr. Blobbimus like an overly excited puppy that just really, really, really wants to show you its new, slobber-covered toy.

That said, I do have an overactive imagination, so even a big ol' blobby boy would've been scary if the AI was actually good enough to present a proper challenge. Sadly, it is not as the monster is basically blind. Even if you run directly in front of it and then dip into the nearby reeds, it won't be able to find you. Similarly, light seems to only attract it if it's pointed directly at it, so just shine your light at the floor or away from the creature and you can basically do whatever you want.

Like I mentioned before Harvest Hunt does try to compensate for this by having the monster teleport after you every once in a while, but even that can be easily avoided by just continuing to move as, again, the poor thing is almost entirely blind. The end result is that the difficulty mostly came from me being impatient and trying to finish each night as efficiently as possible, rather than from anything the monster did.

Smashing your fears with an axe is a highly effective form of therapy

Where it all falls apart

Unfortunately, there is one more major issue to discuss, and this is a very serious one that undermines a lot of the positive things I've said about Harvest Hunt thus far - this is an absurdly tiny game. Despite the effort the developers put into making Harvest Hunt as replayable as possible through the use of roguelike elements and numerous purchasable items, you can see literally everything the game has to offer in the span of two hours.

This is because there is only one map that never changes, only one monster that never changes, and only one objective that never changes. So once you figure out how the monster operates and what the best routes through the swamp are, that's it. Nothing will ever be scary, tense or difficult ever again, and for a game that's supposed to be a survival-horror that is a complete deal-breaker.

When I realized this my heart sank. Usually when I have to criticize a game it's because the developers tried and failed to do something, but in the case of Harvest Hunt it's the developers succeeding at creating a compelling experience, only to then give up halfway through. I don't know if this is because of a lack of resources, time or simply because this was always meant to be a bite-sized game, but whatever the case may be I left Harvest Hunt profoundly unsatisfied.

Unsatisfied because I know that if it had a couple more monsters, a couple more maps and ideally some randomization in both the level generation and monster behavior, it could've been a game I return to time and time again whenever I get that roguelike itch. The atmosphere, especially before you realize how everything works, really is that good! Alas, as it stands Harvest Hunt is a passing curiosity destined to be forgotten within a couple of weeks, and that is a true shame for a game that has managed to nail the hardest part of a survival-horror.

Closing thoughts

Harvest Hunt has me very conflicted. On one hand it has a very intense and foreboding atmosphere, while the various roguelike elements have ended up being a surprisingly good addition to the survival-horror experience. On the other hand, and despite how much I like the concept, I just can't ignore the fact that not only is there a miniscule amount of content on offer, but what's there is also far too easy to remain interesting for very long.

So as far as recommendations go, I'd say this is a very reluctant no. However, if you can get it for cheap and you don't mind the extremely short length, then I'd definitely give it a try as those first few nights are quite magical!