Rogue Harvest

Survival games have been all the rage lately and many people love Minecraft, so it would only be a matter of time before a game came along combining the two. Following those guidelines comes Rogue Harvest released by Genetix Studios.

Rogue Harvest starts off very ominously, having the main character not remembering who he is or how he got into the hut he is in. As you play, bits and pieces begin to come back to him as his memory starts to come back. While I'm sure some won't care about the exposition, I found it nice that this game attempted to throw in a story at all, as it really didn't need too.

On gameplay side of things, it is about as basic as a survival Minecraft-esque game could get. You will be spending your time crafting, building, and fighting off baddies in order to survive. Speaking of surviving, the entire journey is about surviving at least 10 nights. In order to do this, you will need to go out and scavenge the area finding wood, stone, and food for you to live. However, this is easier said than done, as tons of random enemies spawn at night time attempting to kill you.

There are some problems with the fighting mechanics though, as well as the bad guys themselves. The mechanics in Rogue Harvest very basic as stated earlier, you move with the WASD keys, and attack with a click of a button. The problem is that there isn't really a way to avoid enemies. Some bad guys I could kill without ever even being hit, others would hit me over and over again making me feel useless.

When it comes to the crafting, there isn't much to find here. There are the basic things like walls and swords, however that is about it. In other crafting games there are so much more that this feels like a letdown. Which also leads to the fact that building things just isn't that fun. Everything that you can craft is just to get by; it feels very by the numbers.

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Graphically, though, Rogue Harvest has a certain charm to it. It looks as if the game could have been planted right onto the Super Nintendo. Musically, on the other hand, Rogue Harvest is a disappointment. The music never really goes anywhere and is very generic. The sound effects are even worse, as some sounds come off as distorted or just plain weird. On top of that when the flashbacks occur, they just blare onto the screen, and this came off to me as jarring.

In the end, Rogue Harvest is a game that has some of the basics down for survival and crafting games, however, there isn't enough substance to keep players going, and the music doesn't help. I guess the Harvest wasn't that good this year.