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 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 fact 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 programs 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 might change 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 helpful 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 evening sky hangs over the randomly generated farmlands, combining with the plethora of cornstalks, creaky footbridges, and uninviting ponds to kind an initially intriguing entire. 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. Outdoors of the cornstalks and ponds, there are three key landmarks on every map, like a large, gangly tree and a haunting windmill by means of 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 might seen all of it earlier than despite the fact that, on the similar time, I could not probably 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 fascinating card mechanics on prime of that, however its underlying substance is similar, or generally worse; the monster is stressed, however not like in Slender, they’re additionally fairly straightforward 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 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, akin to inserting 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 after they did, I might dash away and simply lose their tail as a rule. Worst of all, nevertheless, is what occurs after 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 might must wiggle free to reduce the harm. As soon as I did squirm away, the sport appeared to provide me one thing like a cooldown the place I might 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 accumulating sufficient provides to satisfy 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 solely solo and severe, and it does not have the scares to make up for that distinction. The sport even desires you to contemplate harming the beast to remodel fragments of their physique into stockpiles of ambrosia, however they had been persistently straightforward sufficient to dodge that I by no means noticed the purpose. I all the time most popular taking part in stealthily and accumulating the important useful resource piece by piece. I admire the play-your-way method in principle, however discovered a method 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 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 persistently worthwhile obstacles and rewards. Every evening of a five-night run, you are given a brand new random profit and detriment, akin to having the ability to harm the beast with fewer hits or flip therapeutic gadgets into further ambrosia when at full well being, but in addition 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 way in which these performed off one another and altered my method for every evening. Although the maps felt insufficiently diverse after the early hours and the monster by no means instilled the concern in me they had been meant to, I nonetheless loved attempting to finish runs as they grew to be extra oppressive with more and more inconceivable quotas.
As you maintain a run, you will additionally pile on short-term bonuses, referred to as strengths, evening after evening till a season ends, in addition to longer-lasting village fortifications that basically simply translate into extra strengths. In the meantime, the Devourer enjoys a single, constant function every season, akin to 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 provided to me grew to become onerous since they had been well-designed and would every make totally different points of a run simpler, akin to permitting me to crouch-walk sooner versus increasing my hit level complete every time I might heal or making the act of therapeutic a sooner one. This gave me pause and compelled me to contemplate builds to counter what else the harvest season was already throwing at me. I might additionally commerce beginning HP for instruments across the map, which felt like an typically dangerous trade-off that I might 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 manner 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 produce 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 may be pressure within the recreation, but it surely does not rise to the heights it desires to as a result of a central villain who cannot pull their weight. That locations a figurative ceiling over its finest moments, but it surely does have vibrant spots. I admire its rustic, askew artwork type and interlocking roguelite programs, which give me an goal value searching down in a folk-horror world that at the least seems to be, and in some methods, performs, the half.