Harvest Island is an indie farming simulator with horror elements. Harvest crops, gather resources, and sacrifice to the gods. Read our review to see what it did well, what it didn't do well, and if it's worth buying.
Harvest Island Review Overview
Harvest Island Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Good Character and Pixel Art Still Getting Continuous Updates and Fixes |
Terribly Slow Start and Unintuitive Story Progression Centers Too Much On Stamina Excessive Forced Backtracking So Much Inventory Management Bugs, Crashes, and Performance Issues |
Harvest Island Overall - 52/100
Harvest Island is an excruciating slow burn horror story told through an adequate farming simulator game. It requires an absurd amount of grinding, random exploration, excessive backtracking, and so much inventory management. Though it has great character portraits and pixel art landscapes and seascapes, they’re all deterred by the numerous questionable game design choices, bugs, and performance issues.
Harvest Island Story - 5/10
Harvest Island sets up a good aura of mystery on the island surrounding the mysterious "God Statues," and the father’s insistence to prioritize offering sacrifices to them before all else. With some good setup for a horror-thriller, it squanders its potential by placing story progression behind tedious fetch quests and random unintuitive exploration that inflate the gaps between story content to an egregious degree.
Harvest Island Gameplay - 5/10
As a farming game, Harvest Island includes all the basics of the genre and has an adequate gameplay loop of farming crops, tending animals, resource gathering, and exploration. However, the horrid inventory management, stamina system, and the constant demand for resources have an overwhelming negative impact upon every other aspect of the game. Instead of providing complexity or depth to the core loop, they directly counteract against progress, leading to lengthy but insignificant hours of playtime.
Harvest Island Visuals - 6/10
Although it has some sprite visibility issues, Harvest Island has really good character and pixel art, all presented with cinematic letterboxing (widescreen with black bars). What ruins it all is the atrocious user interface (UI) that’s a mess in every step of the way. With tiny menus upon tiny menus, janky controls, and so much unnecessary information, the sum of all parts condemns it to an all-around awful user experience (UX).
Harvest Island Audio - 6/10
Harvest Island’s music is serviceable albeit lacking much variety. A handful basic standard tracks are paired to create a relaxing ambience with environments, while "creepy" moments are accompanied with adequate tense music to keep you on your toes. However, the game has several SFX issues, with some normal SFXs playing at much louder volumes than others, and some SFXs being sounding out of place for the specific actions they’re played for.
Harvest Island Value for Money - 4/10
At its current state, Harvest Island’s full price of $24.99 is perplexing. With only the most basic implementations of a farming simulator plagued with leagues of bad game design choices, a counterproductive story progression system, and heaps of performance issues, the price tag is not in any way justifiable. For a game marketed as Stardew Valley with horror elements, you’re better off spending the money to actually buy a copy of Stardew Valley for $14.99, and using the spare $10 to rent a horror movie online.
Harvest Island Review: Rather be Stranded on a Deserted Island
Harvest Island is a farming game with horror elements. Made using RPG Maker, it tries to make the best out of the engine with working farming mechanics. Ultimately, it falls flat due to the story’s abrupt ending, several questionable game design choices, bugs, and performance issues. With an absurd amount of grinding and wandering required to progress the story, coupled with incessant backtracking and inventory management, ALL enveloped by a rapidly depleting stamina system, all of the game’s elements combine for a miserable time.
I really wanted to be invested with the story and mystery. When any new plot elements were being presented, I always got excited. However, actually finding the next plot point always took a a significant time due to the need to gather resources, or the aimless exploration in hopes to find the next plot point by chance. Several times the feeling of dread the game had built up just evaporates due to giving another grinding-based mission. I really loved the approach of subtle changes here and there to instill a feeling of unease, but they were so few and far between that they became trivial. It took me until the 11th hour to find the first few crumbs of horror. I would attempt to find more in an effort to keep that feeling of dread and be immersed, but the game was never able to properly maintain that great feeling of unease in a proper horror game for prolonged periods of time.
As the story’s antagonist was finally revealed, I grew enthusiastic as maybe I’d finally get a proper chase or horror section involving an actual enemy. But as soon as they meet face to face, the game takes control of the chase, and Harvest Island ends.
The game wants to be story-driven, but its gameplay aspects actively goes against progression. Constantly draining stamina, constantly growing fatigue, eternally full inventory, and the endless loop of going in and out of your room all diminish the experience. Once, I was trying to get through a deep forest when I realized I had run out of stamina. I now had no choice but to slowly walk for the rest of my trip, because I didn’t have any food on me. I couldn’t bring food because I had to make enough space for the resources the game wanted me to get. Eventually, I reached a cave and ventured inside to find a big crater that needed a ladder to proceed. I actually had the materials to make a ladder in my inventory from the journey there, but I can only craft from inside my room at home. I unfortunately have no other choice but to go back home. Rinse and repeat, and that’s how most of my trips went.
Eventually, I got tired and devoted a full day of just grinding and gathering, so I won’t be as miserable anymore. I maximized my inventory and chest spaces, as well as collected so much crabs and mussels that I think I caused their extinction. For the rest of the middle to end game, I was entirely fueled by Steamed Crabs and Steamed Mussels. I had to grind so much just to eliminate a few annoying factors that kept halting story progression, and it didn’t feel triumphant.
It’s like instead of making exploration fun, it was designed as obstacle courses to be overcome. Exploration is encouraged by this story driven game, but all game design choices all work together to halt or even regress your progress. I understand that a lot of the game is held back by the engine, but other aspects of Harvest Island were purposeful choices made by the developer. I really wanted to enjoy the game, but the game itself pushed back against me.
Pros of Harvest Island
| Things Harvest Island Got Right |
|---|
|
Good Character and Pixel Art Still Getting Continuous Updates and Fixes |
Good Character and Pixel Art
Credit where credit is due, Harvest Island has great character portraits, cutscene art, and environmental pixel sprite work. The family of three has loads of vibrant character portraits for varying moods and scenarios during dialogue. They enhance the feelings that need to be conveyed of whatever situation they find themselves in and breathe a lot of life. The well-illustrated cutscenes interspersed across the game add emphasis and gravitas to important plot happenings.
The environments are great eye candy. With a constant day/night cycle, and an alternating high tide/low tide schedule, many places go through lighting and layout changes that are all visually appealing. The lakes, rivers, and oceans all glisten against the light of the sun during the day, while the fireflies sparkle up the woods at night.
Still Getting Continuous Updates and Fixes
Since the game’s release, the developer has been continuously responding to player feedback in the form of balance patches and bug fixes. Many of these updates are to alleviate some of the concerns from its initial launch, mainly in the early game. They range from having increased bag capacity, more resources spawning, story bug fixes, added hints, and patching up memory leaks. The game is no doubt in an upward trend as the developer cares deeply for the game.
Despite the rigorous speed at which the fixes and balance patches are coming out, the proceeding downsides I had experienced from the game’s launch are still present, since they’re concerned with the story progression and core loop of the game itself.
Cons of Harvest Island
| Things Harvest Island Can Improve |
|---|
|
Terribly Slow Start and Unintuitive Story Progression Centers Too Much On Stamina Excessive Forced Backtracking So Much Inventory Management Bugs, Crashes, and Performance Issues |
Terribly Slow Start and Unintuitive Story Progression
Harvest Island’s story is a slow burn, where the story proceeds at an incredibly slow pace from the start. This could be excused as its a farming simulator, where things are supposed to progress at a casual cozy pace. However, being presented as a story-driven game, this snail-like pace is inexcusable as it’s maintained for the first 2/3rds of the game. The agonizing pace is mostly due to grinding of resources and the mandatory exploration. The resource grind is connected to a different problem altogether that involves inventory management— a problem of which I will get to later.
Harvest Island’s story quests are very exploration heavy, where you are required to wander around a bit in order to progress. This could be as easy as going around the perimeter of a beach to gather coconuts, or venturing into the woods to find a river and catch fish. Eventually, there will be certain points where the game will not have anything for you to do, and you’ll be left to explore on your own.
This isn’t a negative thing in concept, as exploring on your own should be fun and adventurous! Unfortunately, the implementation isn’t very sound, as it’s a chore to traverse throughout the island’s woodland trees and caves. Traveling through the forest often leads to infuriating moments where you’ll get lost under all the leaves not knowing where your character is. This was clearly a purposeful choice as to "fully immerse" players getting lost to wander the woods, as there is next to no collision within any of the greenery. However, there ARE collisions for the borders of forests where you exit and enter. Meaning, you can be holding a movement key and be walking into a tree at a boundary close to leaving and still not know where you’re at. Believe me, it’s as infuriating as it sounds.
Caves have dark sections no matter the time of day and hidden paths that are confusing to navigate. The most egregious example I had was when I had been wandering around for several in-game days for upwards an hour with nothing to do. I had done all available main quests, and my journal wasn’t providing any hints. I scoured the beaches for every nook and cranny between high-tide and low-tide. I finally mapped out and memorized the wood’s layout and have gone through each area several times. Finally, in a cave that I had already ventured through multiple instances, I finally discovered the remaining path I haven’t taken. As shown in the images above, it was a path downwards that was visually-blocked by the game’s "cinematic" black-bars. After finding the path and exploring further for a total of 5 minutes, I went back home, slept, and the story finally continued. I was really bewildered in discovering that was the actual way to go, as it seemed like an optional hidden path. If you look at the second image, would you think that to advance the story, you would need to stray from that straightforward path and spot a nook in that specific spot to discover the path from the third image?
Besides exploration, the story is also gated with grinding resources to fulfill requirements. Aside from the excusable ones such as upgrading the farm or tools, Harvest Island demands a lot of resources, and thus demands a lot of grinding. They would require resources that need to be gathered around the island, or the game’s currency "Bless" that are mainly earned from daily sacrifices to God Statues scattered across the island. What kind of sacrifices are needed? More resources, of course! Crops, animal produce, fish, and wild flora and fauna are needed to earn "Bless."
So much aimless exploration and so much resource grinding just to progress and repeatedly build four bridges. There are a total of four bridges that require a lot of resources to proceed with the main story (the third one was optional thankfully, as I found a path around it). But imagine being in the climactic reveal of the game where the mystery has all but been uncovered, and to go forward, you need to build another bridge. That’s Harvest Island’s pacing. The final project to be built at the end of the game made sense, as it worked alongside the narrative. I can’t say the same for four random broken bridges though.
Centers Too Much On Stamina
"I’m too tired to do this." is the game’s mantra through and through. Everything and everything to be done requires heaps of stamina that all the while raises fatigue. Stamina is how much energy you can expend, while fatigue gradually builds up and subtracts from the total stamina you can have. Sleeping, napping, or eating food can restore stamina and decrease fatigue. Stamina is drained and fatigue is gained from doing mundane tasks such as walking, running, or mining. They’re also consumed with upgrading and building things, such as barns, coops, bridges, and buildings.
The basic act of walking quickly drains stamina in the early game. Coupled with the horribly slow default walk speed, the game is pretty much goading you to run. Running, you guessed it, takes up a lot of stamina. Besides that, a SINGLE cycle of harvesting crops, using the scythe to clear the soil, planting new seeds, and then watering them will already deplete the lion’s share of your max stamina bar and will accumulate a large chunk of fatigue.
A neat feature Harvest Island has is that, once a day, any form of interaction with your farm animals will lessen fatigue and convert into stamina. Petting, feeding, and singing all have positive effects that encourage you to pay attention to them once a day. Unfortunately, that means having to individually go to each animal across the entire farm, further draining stamina whether you walk or run. A percentage of stamina you’ve regained from interacting with the animals is taken like tax, and it’s as annoying as it sounds.
The worst activity that requires stamina is without a doubt when building and upgrading things. They always require so much that it all seems impossible to have enough in the early to mid game. This was such a difficult feature that the developer eventually added the feature to take infinite naps within a day. There was no way to do your daily chores AND have enough to build/upgrade things needed for the main quests, specially with the scarcity of food in the early game. Worst of all, to make buildings or upgrades, you’d need to expend MORE stamina in order to reach the Crafting Table, which is located all the way in your room inside your house.
Which leads me to my next point:
Excessive Forced Backtracking
There are times where you need to backtrack to previous locations across the island, but they’re definitely part of the story and make sense. The backtracking I’m alluding to, is the need to proceed back to your room to do everything. Your room is tucked away at the leftmost portion of the house, and you’re going to be putting in steps coming in and out whether you like it or not. Your room contains three of the most important things: your bed, your chest, and your Crafting Table. The out-of-place floating crystal is just for changing the game’s zoom percentage, so we can ignore that.
The bed is for saving, napping anytime, and sleeping at night to advance to the next day. The Crafting Table is the ONLY place where you can craft materials, upgrade equipment, and construct buildings; all which are crucial to the game. Why does making anything need to take place from your room within the house? Why can’t building things be done in front of the location they’re to be built on? Is it because you might need the bed closeby to easily restore enough stamina? That wasn’t a problem with the projects and buildings OUTSIDE the farm where we were able to build on-location. Crafting doesn’t need any stamina, so why can’t that be done wherever? Because the chest is inside the room so you can easily access your storage? So why not move the chest outside where it’ll be more accessible? While we’re moving things, why not place the Crafting Table outside as well so it’ll be easier to access? Were any of these questions raised during development?
These problems are further exacerbated in the late game when you build a shed to house various activities, from smelting, skinning, and seed making. They’re all tucked away in another corner, and so if you find yourself short of some iron or copper, you would need to walk all the way from your room, out your house, into the shed, do whatever, and then walk back, wasting more stamina.
So Much Inventory Management
Harvest Island has a lot of things you can pick up, from the farm, the woods, the caves, and the beaches. You would think, maybe with the abundance and variety of items the island holds, adventuring and collecting should take priority, and so you should be able to carry and store a lot. Sorry buddy, bad news: you have small hands and a small bag. Oh, what about your chest at home? Already full. What do you do with that cool thing you want to pick up? Forget it, just go ALL THE WAY BACK HOME for your chest and just make room, it’s that easy. Hey, it’s either that or you throw away some of the things you’re carrying. I promise you won’t need them later on… maybe. Trust me. Okay, now just do this over a hundred times over the course of the game. Goodluck!
This was such a prominent problem that the developer had buffed the starting inventory and chest capacity in an update. Unfortunately for me, when that update came, I had already grinded to upgrade mine to the max due to how annoyed I was. Though with the absurd amount of items you can collect around the island, you’d still need all the capacity you can get.
Bugs, Crashes, and Performance Issues
Harvest Island has a handful of bugs that even the Iron Net can’t catch. Oftentimes I would find that the day cycle would switch back and forth between night and day very quickly. Sometimes weather effects would disappear in one area, and reappear the next. The fast travel screen starts up very slowly and briefly flashes a weird graphical bug depicting a messed up map. Traveling inside the mines, they would briefly flash a lit-up room and then darken. I experienced a couple story bugs where the characters would allude to having met certain animals prior to the event, but they were ones I had never come across before. There’s also a couple funny bugs where I could walk on water because the high-tide/low-tide schedule was bugging out. The journal would frequently show darkened letters which made it hard to read anything. Besides that, I would sometimes experience random heavy frame drops.
The most painful bug I experienced was a game crash just as I was about to save. I was infuriated with the amount of resources required to progress, so I had devoted a few hours to grind and collect as many as I could somewhat coast by the main story more. I did some crafting, and went to bed to save. My screen froze on the save menu, and it wouldn’t continue. I panicked and tried canceling out and moving, and I heard the footsteps of me moving and bumping into things. I tried to find my way back to the bed and maybe still save the 2-3 hour grinding session. But alas when I used Task Manager to end the game, all progress I had was lost. To dangle the save screen in front of me was cruel, and I never recovered from that. Aside from that heartbreak, the game also inflated my in-game playtime hours for some reason. Before, it had listed 18-19 hours as my playtime, but the next time I saved it had spiked up to 32-33 hours. It never reverted back to the correct time.
Is Harvest Island Worth It?
No. Better Alternatives Already Exist
For a farming simulator, Harvest Island is passable, with a unique stamina-fatigue system unlike others of the genre. Its horror side is an excruciating slow burn, but is somewhat interesting. However, the key plot points could easily be ascertained as heavily inspired by certain Anime series (of which I can’t name to avoid spoilers). Harvest Island is the amalgamation of stories and genres, and thus the resulting game has a lot of flaws in its pacing and game design.
For the price of $24.99, you would be better off purchasing and playing other better farming simulator games on the market. If the horror aspect is what you’re after, just rent a horror movie and have it play on the side while you’re playing something else. With the overwhelming amount of hassle and hours you would need to sink into the game to get to the "scary" parts, you could watch dozens of mystery-horror flicks back-to-back instead and be fulfilled.
But if even after all that, you’re still curious about the mysteries of Harvest Island, then don’t let the problems deter some of the enjoyment that’s still present in the game. If you can persist through, then all the pretty art and the slow unraveling of the mystery would be the best experiences you can get from Harvest Island. Though…maybe wait for a sale.
Harvest Island Overview & Premise
On a blissful island where nothing seems to ever go wrong, Will and his younger sister Samantha help their father farm and harvest for the gods. But what are these gods? Why do they harvest each day for them? Why should they? Will grows more and more curious by the day. With his sister in tow, he sets out to find the secrets of this blissful island full of mysteries and lies - all while keeping the gods happy with their harvests!
Harvest Island Product Information
 |
|
| Title | HARVEST ISLAND |
|---|---|
| Release Date | October 10, 2023 |
| Developer | Yobob Games |
| Publisher | Yobob Games |
| Supported Platforms | PC |
| Genre | Farming, Horror |
| Number of Players | 1 |
| ESRB Rating | N/A |
| Official Website | Harvest Island Website |
