Harvest Hunt Review (Steam)

Rating: 7.2
Author: Jim Smale

by Jim Smale · May 24, 2024

Harvest Hunt Review, You are the Warden, the sole guardian standing against the nightmarish creature that stalks your village. Safeguard the villagers. Face nightly terrors. Uncover the dark secrets of Luna Nova. These are the shadow-draped realms of Harvest Hunt, a spine-chilling roguelike survival horror.

Harvest Hunt Review Pros:

Decent graphics.
1.14GB Download size.
Steam achievements.
Full controller support.
Graphics settings – brightness slider, windowed mode, resolution, v-sync, frame rate limit, graphics preset, render scale, view distance, post processing, anti aliasing, shadow, texture, effects, foliage, and shading.
Camera settings – head bob (on/off), and field of view slider.
Game settings – notifications, item interaction prompt, item flashing effect, reticule, status effects, wardens sight ui, and virtual cursor sensitivity.
Tutorial pop ups as you play and in the menus. They can be replayed. The first five nights act as a playable tutorial. (can be skipped)
You are trying to collect Ambrosia at the very least in each harvest before the Devourer contaminated it.
First person view.
A really cool looking games.
Fantastic atmospheric soundtrack full of chills.
You can pause the game.
Ambrosia comes in different sizes so it gives you different amounts once collected.
The game revolves around you surving five nights of a ritual without getting caught. As you progress nights can add in new optional objectives.
Once you complete your tasks or whenever you feel like it you then have to escape which is where white smoke bellows.
To finish a harvest it will always have an Ambrosia amount you need to fill. You have five nights to do it so you can divvy it up however you like.
Wardens sight let’s you see the outline of where the Warden is.
You can trigger environmental things to disguise your footsteps or send the Warden the wrong way.
It’s a game that plays like a Dead by Daylight in a way as you are being hunted but you have to do things in order to escape.
It is a lot of fun to play.
Full of stealth, you can crouch to make less noise, turn off lights and lanterns and all sorts.
If the devourer grans you then you can mash your lean buttons to escape.
Food can be found to regain health.
Every action whether it be leaving, grabbing health or harvesting it takes time with you holding a button down.
Earn and unlock cards to grant buffs, weapons and ability cards that will show up at the landmarks page before a new night.
Has cool little effects like having the lantern off for too long makes your eye sight blurry for a time afterwards.
Whispers is a set of three random cards that are displayed before a night and two of them grant either a good or bad effects to you, the devourer or both, with the third card being a mutation of the devourer.
Acquire tools that can help with the many dangers of the world, thing is though you have to go to the particular land marks in order to get your tools.
Vigor (health) is used to acquire tools and any left over vigor is what you have for the night.
A pitchfork albeit a weak one is always available in the farmland regardless of if you buy tools beforehand.
You can only carry one item/weapon at a time.
It’s possible to attack the devourer who will then drop a fragment of himself that you can put into the tree to make an effigy and banish the devourer from the world.
Your hand (load out) is where you choose which warden and villager cards to play for that night. You can only hold a set amount overall and can sacrifice cards to clear them.
The warden sight screen shows how much total Ambrosia you have so far and also tells you how much is left in the current harvest.
Well presented.
The environment is like another player in that it can help or hinder you, you can hide in bushes, walking over bones makes more noise as does water.
The game offers some really cool clever modifiers like creatures in the water that can hurt you but that also alerts the devourer.
The compendium houses character lore, game lore, characteristics, and lore.
Offers a lot of replay value.

Harvest Hunt Review Cons:

Cannot remap controls.
The stick acts as a mouse so the menus are not the best to navigate.
No Invert camera axis or sensitivity sliders.
Doesn’t have Colourblind support.
A lot to take in initially.
It does take some getting used to everything especially the weapons and dealing with the devourer.
The marking of things in the game is not always clear, finding the devourer mask after a banishment being one.
The warden sight screen is really busy and leaves only a small windo for you to actually see things in game.
Losing the devourer is really hard bordering on impossible.
When the devourer gets a bead on you or is summoned via a bell or another alert he knows exactly where you are and turns up so quickly you cannot possible react.
For a game with a lot of noise makers and stealth, it doesn’t have a clear noise indicator to help you.
Interactions have to be so precise and when you are up against it the game let’s your down.
It always feels like the deck is stacked against you.
A harvest (five nights) can go on for a while.
Had many cheap deaths where the devourer will either spawn right by me or he keeps coming back to the same area before I can leave.
Never sure when it has saved.