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 discipline of grain into the setting of a horror story. Villainous Video games leans into this common fact because the centerpiece of its people horror recreation, Harvest Hunt. Pitted in opposition to 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 instant 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 diverse enough–no matter in the event that they’re useful or detrimental–that they continue to be fascinating 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 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.
![There's something timelessly scary about cornfields.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1632/16320660/4308626-20240515070503_1.jpg)
I solely wished these randomly generated maps had extra variable elements. Exterior of the cornstalks and ponds, there are three key landmarks on every map, like an enormous, 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 night time to nighttime, leaving me feeling like I would seen all of it earlier than although, on the similar time, I could not presumably map the pathways. It is one way or the other dizzying and overly acquainted directly.
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 fascinating card mechanics on prime of that, however its underlying substance is similar, or generally worse; the monster is stressed, however in contrast to in Slender, they’re additionally fairly straightforward to evade.
The Devourer stands two or 3 times taller than the participant character, with a peculiarly spherical shadowy physique sporting inexperienced sores however not a lot else. Given their top, you’ll be able to generally see them coming from a distance, and when you’ll be able to’t, there are methods of finding them, reminiscent of 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 once they did, I may dash away and simply lose their tail most of the time. 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 reduce the injury. As soon as I did squirm away, the sport appeared to offer 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 specific quota by run’s finish is not in contrast to that which you’d see within the hilarious-but-scary horror du jour, Deadly Firm, however Harvest Hunt is performed totally solo and critical, and it does not have the scares to make up for that distinction. The sport even desires you to think about harming the beast to remodel fragments of their physique into stockpiles of ambrosia, however they have been persistently straightforward sufficient to dodge that I by no means noticed the purpose. I all the time most well-liked taking part in stealthily and gathering the important useful resource piece by piece. I recognize the play-your-way method in concept, however discovered a technique was clearly higher.
![By applying buffs and nerfs in every round, new strategies could emerge, but no matter what, I didn't see the point in fighting the monster.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1632/16320660/4308627-20240509094656_1.jpg)
A lot essentially hangs on a horror recreation’s scare worth that I used to be oddly nonetheless impressed with Harvest Hunt for being fascinating at the same time as its monstrous mascot is not. Performed as a horror recreation, it is moody however falls shy of its targets. Performed as a roguelite at the start, nevertheless, it fares significantly better. That is primarily as a result of the sport’s deck-building system presents persistently worthwhile obstacles and rewards. Every night time of a five-night run, you are given a brand new random profit and detriment, reminiscent of with the ability to injury the beast with fewer hits or flip therapeutic objects into extra 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 night time. Although the maps felt insufficiently diverse after the early hours and the monster by no means instilled the concern 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 momentary bonuses, referred to as strengths, night time after night time 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 characteristic every season, reminiscent of leaving a path of poisonous fuel of their wake.
Strengths and fortifications are chosen from totally different intervals, and selecting any card over the others supplied to me grew to become laborious since they have been well-designed and would every make totally different points of a run simpler, reminiscent of permitting me to crouch-walk quicker versus increasing my hit level complete 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 may additionally commerce beginning HP for instruments across the map, which felt like an typically dangerous trade-off that I would nonetheless settle for.
![The foreboding world is comic-booky and rustic at once.](https://www.gamespot.com/a/uploads/scale_super/1632/16320660/4308628-20240509094516_1.jpg)
These many overlapping and generally 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 will deplete my HP and convey me to the brink (or past) of complete failure, thus resetting all of my progress.
In Harvest Hunt, the stakes are actual, however the scares aren’t. There’s stress within the recreation, but it surely does not rise to the heights it desires to because of a central villain who cannot pull their weight. That locations a figurative ceiling over its finest moments, but it surely does have shiny spots. I recognize its rustic, askew artwork type and interlocking roguelite techniques, which give me an goal value searching down in a folk-horror world that at the very least seems, and in some methods, performs, the half.