It’s Saturday, so it’s time once again put on your mining helmet, grab a pickaxe and join me as I take you spelunking in obscure caverns for all but neglected games. I’ll attempt to show why these games deserve much more attention by examining their strengths and why, just like actual gems, they have value.

This week, I invite you to look at a game that may well be of the most violent and disturbing games to ever grace the market.

Name of game: Harvester

Date of Release: 1995

Developed by: DigiFX Interactive, Inc.

Published by: Merit Studios, Inc

Platform: DOS

For better or worse, violence has been a long enduring element in video games. It has been practically glorified in titles like Mortal Kombat, Grand Theft Auto, Splatterhouse, Soldier of Fortune and DOOM. And why shouldn’t it be? Many gamers cannot resist the urge to relieve some stress by pounding enemies into a bloody pulp, scoring successive headshots, and dismembering body parts. The idea that you can do all that without getting in trouble in real life is certainly quite an exhilarating feeling.

Of course, such games have attracted their share of controversy, protest and, in some cases, censorship. But despite all of that, all you need to do to understand the power of violence in video games is look at the money and popularity it generates for the companies that make them and you’ll understand the meaning of the phrase “violence sells.”

That’s not to say violence has that effect all the time, as the 1995 game Harvester will tell you.

Developed by DigiFX Interactive and published by Merit Studios, Harvester is a point and click adventure game for DOS. The game received massive outrage for its disturbing content and graphic violence. While this equated to free publicity Harvester, upon its release, wound up suffering from a lack of sales and many critical reviews. The result has put the game in near obscurity and not many gamers have ever heard about it.

Harvester puts you in the shoes of Steve: a man who wakes up in the small town of Harvest. He discovers that he not only has any memory of how he came to be in the town, but that he has a hard time remembering anything else for that matter. But he is able to maintain enough of his mental faculties to understand that town of Harvest, besides being strangely reminiscent of America during the 1950s, is insane. Its citizenry is comprised of individuals who either are violent, secretive, deranged, or all of the above.

Worse still, Steve finds that there is no way to leave the town. He is a prisoner trapped in a strange place.

But he discovers that there may be a way to, he discovers that it is ruled by a highly secretive society known only as the Order of the Harvest Moon which runs just about everything within its confines. The society eventually offers Steve an opportunity to join their ranks by assigning him a series of tasks. Once completed, he will be allowed inside the lodge: the headquarters of the order. It’s an offer that they, as well as the townsfolk, urge him to accept or he will be forced to “contribute” to the town’s annual blood drive.

With little choice in the matter, you must help Steve survive long enough to complete the tasks asked of him and gain entry the lodge. Whether or not Steve finds the answers to his questions in there is hard to say, but it is there that the real challenge will have begun.

Harvester uses a classic third person adventure control scheme. With a simple point of your mouse followed by a left click, Steve will walk to his intended destination. If you cursor comes into contact with anything you can interact with, the cursor will indicate this and it will take another left click to examine, interact, pick up items , or talk to other characters. You can also easily access your inventory by simply clicking once on Steve. Although you are required to use the keyboard to access the menu from which to access this game’s options, as well as being able to save, load, and quit, Harvester’s predominant use of the mouse makes it easy to start playing the game immediately.

For the most part, Harvester is a typical adventure game in which most of your time will be spent navigating your character from place to place, solving puzzles, interacting with the world, and trying to advance the story to its end. At times the game can move quite slowly, especially during the game’s first half. It does manage to do a few things to make the experience more unique from the conventions of other adventure games.

For example: In talking with the many characters you encounter, a list of topics will appear whenever you get to a break in the conversation. Clicking on one these topics will result in you talking about it with other characters. At times, the talks will result in you having to select from one of multiple lines of dialogue which will result in the conversation taking different directions. It’s handled in a rather realistic manner in which only topics that are mentioned during talks with characters can be selected afterwards.

The result of that is you will often find yourself at a point where it is impossible to talk about a particular topic that was available before. Not to worry, the game has a unique in which all you’ll need to do is just type in the topic as it first appeared and the dialogue will immediately commence as if you had clicked on it when it was available. It’s a nice feature that allows you to get more exposition and information from characters to chat to.

The most unique feature is revealed when you click the right mouse button. Doing so will cause Steve to initiate an offensive attack to the upper, middle, or lower parts of your target depending on where you click. You can not only just your fists to accomplish this, but you will also find plenty of weapons you can use as well. They can range from melee weapons (knives, baseball bats, etc.) to long ranged weapons which are almost entirely firearms. Once you find any of these, all you need to do is go into your inventory screen and right click on the weapon of your choice. After that, Steve is armed.

While you will encounter hostile enemies during the game that will require that you be aggressive, the game lets you attack non-hostile characters as well. This means that you have the ability to kill practically all of the townsfolk of Harvest during the first half of the game. If you do this, then the will be permanently taken out of the game and you will be unable to interact with them again and will have some impact on the progression of the story.

If you chose to take advantage of this, you will be punished for it more often than not by being arrested. You have essentially a three strike law in Harvest given the twisted nature of the town. The first time you kill someone, you are given a warning and driven back to your home. The second time will result in you being put into jail, which you can actually escape from and reset the counts you have back to zero. The third time will result in you being executed.

On the other hand, if you kill a character that is invaluable to the story will result in you being automatically being executed. So it is always best to save whenever you think of offing a character because you never know how important they are to the game. But this is something that will no longer be a burden irrelevant once you enter the lodge of the enemies there are not passive and far more eager to end your life.

Harvester, as I’ve mentioned, is a very violent game. It’s also a very, very disturbing one as well. Without spoiling too much, this game involves many taboo themes such as murder, sex, prostitution, suicide, abuse, and cannibalism. These all take shape in the form of scenes and images that really push this game’s M rating to the limit. Words alone will suffice to properly explain how unsettling the game can make you feel at times.

The game doesn’t do this just for shock value. Harvester is a sort of critique of the protests against video game violence, especially in regards to the claims it making people into murderers. The game debunks that by showing players that violence, not just the kind emulated in video games, has long been a part of our human nature. By forcing players to acknowledge the darkest aspects of humankind through their actions and viewing discomforting scenes, Harvester is one of the few violent video games to do something unheard of: it tries to teach a message. It’s a very explicit one, but effective none the less.

In the end, Harvester manages to be entertaining and, at times, very challenging. It has a mind bending story, unique concepts, and is incredibly engaging once look past its flaws. It is an experience that has been harshly underrated by both critics and gamers alike. It definitely does not deserve such treatment and is a game that still yearns to be enjoyed. All that’s missing is you playing it.

With that said, why not leave your sanity behind for a while and see if you can go get a copy of Harvester?

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