[h1] Review - Rogue Harvest [/h1]
===
[h1] RATING: 6.0 / 10 - Life is just a dream, drifting on a stream, a stream... [/h1]
===
[h1] Overview [/h1]
Rogue Harvest is an hardcore roguelike 2D survival game. After finding yourself inside a strange and unknown land, you realize not to remember how you got there and even who you are, the only thing you know is that now you need to find a way to survive. Armed with only basic tools, a little shed at your disposal, you will need to harvest crops, hunt animals for food, fight monsters and survive harsh climates, and maybe by surviving long enough, you will remember what happened.
===
[h1] Gameplay Analysis [/h1]
[b] General Gameplay [/b]
Rogue Harvest is a 2D survival game. Your main objective is simple: survive against all odds. To do so, you will need to mantain your Energy up, a statistic representing your general well-being, and restored generally by eating food or sleeping during the night, and aswell your Life, which is the classic HP bar, if reaches zero, you are dead. There is also a Leveling system with pre-set augments to HP, Energy and Defense, no customization of levaling up is present.
The main activities you will be engaged into are Fighting, Crafting and Gathering. We will talk about Fighing in the next section. About Crafting, it is pretty simple and straightforward: a menu opened with the C key will display all the available items from the start, and the resources to make them. Better swords, tools, armors, traps, doors, walls, furniture, everything you need to survive is obtainable with Crafting, even if some of them require a Crafting Bench or an Oven to be crafted. There is not a huge variety of items, they are around 25-30 in total to craft.
Gathering is done as in any other survival game: explore the world, find what you need, be it wood from trees, meat from animals, metal from ore deposits, or more exotic materials from dangerous enemies, such as spider silk. The map will be procedurally generated and include forests (not very dense ones tho), mountains filled with ores, pre-made houses, and of course a lot of monsters and animals, progressively becoming more numerous and strong the farther you get from the starting point. You will of course need specific tools to get specific materials, such as Pickaxe to gather stone or metals.
You will be able to build your very own shelter to survive the nights, as each night a horde of monsters will attack you and it is fundamental to get a strong defense up in a few days or selse be overwhelmed. Monsters attacking in the night will not be found normally in the world and at later stages will be even able to destroy reinforced walls using Bombs, so better get a very thick layer of defenses between you and them. Building is pretty simple: just select an item from the quick bar, place it on the ground, and done. To remove buildings, the special Hammer tool can do that efficently.
Climate will also be an enemy, as Winter will not let crops grow, and make you freeze if exposed to cold too much time.
As far as i've seen, currently there is not a true end to this game, once you get a good fortress built, all the best equipment, and survive more than 10 nights (which is the highest achievement), you can consider the game finished. The developer confirmed he wants to add an Endgame content update, but no date has been set.
[b] Combat System [/b]
Combat in Rogue Harvest is basic, 2D realtime combat. Left mouse click to use a weapon, each of them has a different reach and speed (there are only Swords and the basic Axe as Melee Weapons), and will require care to swing at the right moment without enemies getting too close and hit you on their own. Some practice and you will get the hang of it. Ranged Weapons include a Bow and several Magic Wands with different effects, including summoning temporary allies and transforming enemies in less harmful creatures. All weapons except basic ones have a Durability and will eventually break, forcing you to craft them again.
Each killed creature will drop, with other things, Souls, a material used to craft many weapons and items. Souls can slo be gathered from Soul Wells, you can craft and place them in your base.
[b] Content [/b]
It may take you some or many tries in order to survive for a long time, it is all about finding a strategic place to build your base and being efficent. For me, the game lasted 3-4 hours before i have been able to survive 14 days, have all the best gear and a very strong fortress at my disposal.
[b] Balancing [/b]
I feel the game is balanced pretty well, there are no overpowered things as far as i've seen.
[b] Challenge [/b]
It very much depends. Nights without a good base can certainly be very difficult to survive especially after some days, combat is quite tough at the start but gets much easier with proper gear. Overall, considering survival aspects, i'd rate this game a moderate-to-good challenge.
===
[h1] Technical Analysis [/h1]
[b] Graphics [/b]
Graphics are 2D models and tilesets, very basic at that, with no particular pros at anything. Considering the current standard for indie games of this type, i'd define the graphics of this title as sub-par.
[b] Sound [/b]
Sounds and music are alright, but nothing impressive or special about them.
[b] Performance [/b]
The game has some unexplicable framerate drops in some areas. These areas had nothing in common that i could figure out to justify such drops. It happens sometimes and is about from 60 FPS to 40-35 FPS, quite a major issue but not critical. Aside from this, nothing else to report.
[b] Stability [/b]
Nothing to report.
[b] AI [/b]
Enemy Ai follows a basic follow and attack pattern, as expected.
[b] Quality of Life [/b]
Some good things have been done for Quality of Life, like Stacking of same type of Armors or Swords in order to immediately change one with another when the first one breaks. But also, other things are not good, like items picked up going in the quick bar, or some items not stacking together such as Flowers. Chests are very small compared to the amount of stuff you find, requiring many. There are no forms of auto sorting or stack-splitting directly, unless using chests as a medium to split stacks by depositing and then getting part of the stack from the crate again. Overall, so-so.
[b] Bugs / Issues [/b]
Doors and Gate Doors put in certain positions will display the open-close animation continuously. Enemies will spawn inside blocks especially in maounain areas and stay stuck for a long time. Sometimes items will disappear when transferred from chests to inventory with no reason (rare). Aside from these, no other bugs found.
===
[h1] Conclusion [/h1]
Rogue Harvest is a very basic survival roguelike game with some good ideas and overall decently made. It is not an outstanding work, and not even a great work, but it does the job and for the price proposed, it is a decent product.
