Harvest Hunt is a roguelite survival horror game from the team over at Villianous Games Studio. If you read my review of Crow Country, you’ll be aware that I am a massive scaredy cat. This may make me the best person to review horror games, as at the very least the scares are definitely going to land!

Sweet Ambrosia

Havest Hunt certainly has some scares on offer. You play as a Warden, tasked with protecting the town of Luna Nova from a malevolent creature known as the Devourer. Right of the bat, Harvest Hunt is dripping with atmosphere. The hand drawn artstyle, with it’s thick, black, scratched out lines and colour pallet of ruddy browns and grimy greens give the town of Luna Nova a deeply oppressive feel. This alongside the fantastic writing – the lore of the monster, the town and each warden is full of intrigue and character – and compelling sound design gives a lingering sense of dread even in the menus between runs.

As the chosen Warden your nightly routine is to skulk around the town collecting Ambrosia before escaping. The Ambrosia grows in various clumps throughout the cornfields, but the longer you take the more of it will be corrupted by the presence of the Devourer. If your feeling brave you can also banish the Devourer by collecting 3 of it’s fragments and attaching them to an effigy in the centre of town. Obviously banishment is more tricky, but it will net you significantly more Ambrosia. So starts the standard risk reward cycle of a roguelike.

Risky Business

Each night the town is also affected by Whisper, that take the form of tarot cards. These cards contain a specific buff, debuff and power for the Devourer – allowing for some variety between runs. You also get strengths and fortifications along the same vein. Strengths are character specific and disappear at the end of a run, where as fortification to the town are permanent upgrades. Strategic use of these cards can help cancel out the debuff Whispers and help you better face off the threats thrown at you. A lot of the cards were interesting, but there did seem to be some that were better than others. I played quite aggressively, and found the card that makes your move faster whilst crouched and the Hideout card that hides you from the Devourer allowed me to quite effectively banish the monster at least once per each cycle.

There is also a variety of tools that you can spawn at 3 locations on the map. Each tool costs a small amount of vigor to spawn, so you’ll need to weigh up exactly what you want to spend your life on, or just hope to quickly find some rations to gain it back before the Devourer happens upon you.

And trust me, you’ll likely need those Hideouts. The Devourer has… bizarre AI. A lot of the time I struggled to find it on the small map, which lead to me ringing bells and hoping it wouldn’t immediately grab me before I could hit it. Crouching and disabling your lantern makes you more difficult to detect, but it seemed inconsistent – sometimes it would still see me immediately, others it would basically be sitting on me without detecting my presence. On the times where I managed to evade it without getting grabbed it would appear to teleport across the map and I’d need to hide all over again. This was exacerbated by the fact there is only one map and it’s quite small. A few more areas to run around and most importantly get lost in, would help with the replayability overall.

Overall

I enjoyed Harvest Hunt quite a bit. As a self confessed scaredy cat, there is plenty of atmosphere and scares to make it a satisfying horror experience but not too much I didn’t enjoy myself. The artstyle and writing are particular stand outs and you can really tell how much passion went into the project. The cards system promises a lot of variety, however this is stifled somewhat by the small play area and the fact there is only one play area. A little bit of extra content can easily solve this issue and really expand the experience for a lot of players. You also cannot access the options when in the game, only the main menu which is odd. And you can’t invert the Y axis – which I know is niche! – but I struggle with the camera because of it.

Altogether Harvest Hunt is a fun experience for horror and roguelike fans, but many might find it lacking after a few runs. Hopefully the team over at Villainous Games Studio have more up their sleeves for the game to really show off it’s full potential.

Harvest Hunt was reviewed on PC – thank you to Neonhive the Publisher for the code.