Review Harvest Developer: Michael B. Clark Publisher: Michael B. Clark Genre: Adventure Release Date: December 2002 Platform: Review by Alexander Tait August 18, 2004		Buy this game at Trade for this game at:

“Sow and ye shall reap…”

In writing this review, I have used a number of unnecessary puns and word associations with regard to “harvest”. They are underlined throughout the review so that the slower readers can wholly participate in a journey into my questionable level of sanity, which I suppose throws a shadow of doubt over the reliability of this review…

I never set my expectations too high for independently-made games. Independent developers, of course, do not have the resources available to big name developers. The only thing you might see in favor of the independent developer is complete control over the format and content of the game. And to that end, there is a bounty of goodness to be found in this game. For Michael B. Clark composed the story, the music, created the game, and sells it himself on his website as well as his follow up title, The Arrangement. About the only thing he had to field to others was the quality testing!

Harvest installed the disk without a hitch. It’s not that large an install but it takes a long time to install to the hard drive. I did it several times and it’s not an exaggeration to say you could make a cup of coffee in the time it takes. But, who am I to complain? I installed Knights of the Old Republic last week and I feel like I’m still waiting for it to finish installing. Harvest uses the AdventureMaker engine and anyone familiar with it will jump right into the driver’s seat with this game easily. The game was completely stable from beginning to end. I had no crashes at any time during the perhaps five hours of gameplay. I did experience occasional graphical glitches where the top half of the screen did not meet the lower half properly. This was fixed by turning away and then returning to the erroneous screen.

The graphics are simple yet colorful. They are not going to threaten any of the major game designers but they are adequate for this game. This game is old-fashioned in that it has a strong storyline supported by adequate graphics as opposed to beautiful graphics in a game world of no significance. Michael used a variety of graphics programs to create the different locations in the game and their variety stands out much like a house that has rooms that are wallpapered and carpeted differently. It is evident throughout that the game has been a learning process. Certain sections are two-dimensional and very angular, whereas as Michael’s skills have developed, the graphical complexity likewise blossomed.

My initial thoughts on the voice acting are that while it was not on a level with acting in a quality movie, it was much better than much of that found in independent games. At the time of reaching this conclusion, I had heard the voice of a ghost and was pretty impressed with the effects. When I heard the voice acting of the son in the story, I have to report doing a complete one-eighty: the acting here is woeful. I am not sure why the character seems to be putting on a stereotyped, caricature gay voice: think a gay Mike from Dark Seed 2. I noticed that the dialog voices did not always play, which is something I noticed with other AdventureMaker games, so I suspect there may be an incompatibility with my sound card drivers. Later, I reinstalled my sound card drivers and found the sound worked near flawlessly.

The plot is an old-fashioned one, simple and revealed through journal entries for the first half. The second half, in all ways inferior to the first, features characters and the plot is forwarded by interaction with them. It was a strange transition for me. I was intrigued by the quest in the first half of the game-the empathy I felt for the characters and the events that had transpired is akin to that I felt in Grim Fandango and the Broken Sword series but this is emotionally deeper than these titles, or even most adventure games. However, the second half seemed more about convoluted puzzles than any meaningful story. That is, until the final scene, which is poignant and left me feeling wistful.

Puzzles, especially in the early stages, are at the easy end of the spectrum. Although I was scratching my head on occasions, rational and logical thought gave me the solutions to the problems. At least, in the beginning… Some of the later puzzles were downright hard and quite unlike any I had seen before. This is quite a feat considering the number of adventure games I have played. Michael is to be commended for a variety of puzzle types and for throwing some real brainteasers in there too. I have to warn you, dear reader, there are mazes (no maize pun here!)… Two of them, in fact… You may find the first difficult, but you will surely be impressed with the design of what is both a maze and a puzzle. The later maze is easy and readily navigated by using the ol’ noggin. I use the “turn left rule” but turning right is just as good as long as it is used consistently.

Despite the limitations of the simplistic graphics and the average voice acting, the storyline places the game firmly above the crop of independent games out there. Let’s face it, these days if a “graphical adventure” has a good storyline, its streets ahead of the usual fertilizer we all know and suffer through. Yet again, an independent game developer has done what the large companies fail to do: come up with the goods. We can only hope Michael cultivates his developer’s skills and that his games propagate.

What Michael has produced in this game deserves high praise. The fruit of his labors is a game that is strong where it counts: design, gameplay, and storyline. Admittedly, the sound and graphics could be better, and the story wasn’t as intriguing in later parts, but there is a seed here that I suspect will yield more quality adventures in the future. This game deserves a B-/C+ when compared with commercial games but a B/B+ when considered as an independent game.

Anyway, enough corn from me…

Final Grade: B/B+
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System Requirements:

• Windows 95/98/2000/ME/XP
• 75 Mhz or faster
• about 400 mb of Hard Disk space