Farming games are usually about relaxing, planting crops, raising animals and slowly building up a peaceful little patch of land where your biggest concern is whether you remembered to water the tomatoes.
Harvestin Season clearly has other ideas.
This upcoming 1 to 4 player co-op farming game takes the familiar farming formula and throws it straight into complete chaos. During the day, you work the land, plant crops, raise livestock and slowly expand your farm. It sounds peaceful enough at first, but the moment night arrives, everything you have spent the day growing turns hostile.
Your crops become monsters, your livestock is suddenly trying to kill you, and the only way to actually harvest what you planted is to fight back.
That means every peaceful farming session is essentially preparation for the battle waiting later that evening. The more ambitious you get during the day, the more dangerous things become once darkness rolls in.
Yes, your crops want you dead.
Build Your Farm and Create Your Own Problems
During the day, players can till fields, plant crops, raise livestock and gradually expand into larger plots as their farming operation grows. It still has many of the familiar ingredients you would expect from a farming game, only everything you do eventually comes back to haunt you.
Planting related crops together allows you to create chains that can improve the rewards you receive, giving players a reason to think carefully about how they organise their fields rather than simply throwing seeds into every available patch of dirt.
You can also fertilise crops to increase their value and even inject steroids into your livestock, which is probably one of the strangest sentences I have ever had to write about a farming game.
Of course, there is a downside.
The more valuable you make your crops and animals, the stronger they become when night arrives. That turns farming into a constant risk and reward system where greed could either make you rich or leave you desperately fighting an army of overpowered vegetables.
You are essentially responsible for creating your own difficulty level.
Plant a modest amount, keep everything manageable and you might have a relatively controlled evening. Fill every available field, boost everything you possibly can and suddenly you have created an agricultural nightmare that you and your friends actually have to survive.
It makes every decision during the day feel important because you already know you are eventually going to have to deal with whatever you have planted.
Night-Time Turns Farming Into a Fight for Survival
Once darkness falls, Harvestin Season completely changes.
The crops and livestock you have spent the day looking after transform into monsters, and suddenly your peaceful farm becomes a battlefield. Instead of watering plants and checking your animals, you are grabbing weapons and trying to survive long enough to collect your harvest.
Thankfully, the game gives players plenty of ways to defend themselves.
There are more traditional weapons such as rifles, shotguns, daggers, axes and flails, but Harvestin Season also embraces its ridiculous farming theme with some much stranger options.
One of those is a pitchfork Gatling gun, which already sounds like exactly the sort of weapon you would expect from a game where carrots can apparently decide they have had enough of you.
There is also a hay bale launcher, allowing you to turn one of the most harmless things on a farm into something capable of helping you fight back against whatever nightmare you accidentally grew earlier that day.
The enemies themselves also appear to be more aggressive than simply charging towards you in a straight line. They can climb over one another to reach players, meaning hiding on top of a pile of hay bales will not necessarily keep you safe.
That should make the night-time battles much more unpredictable, especially once several different creatures are attacking at once.
What makes the whole idea interesting is that every enemy you are fighting exists because of decisions you made earlier. You planted it, you improved it, and now you have to deal with the consequences.
Farming has officially become dangerous.
Bosses and Co-op Look Completely Chaotic
The regular crops and livestock are not the only things looking to ruin your evening either.
Harvestin Season also features full boss encounters, and based on what has been revealed so far, the developers seem perfectly happy to make them as ridiculous as possible.
One boss is a pig in medieval armour, carrying a giant meat cleaver. Another is a spider roughly the size of your barn, while there is also a vampire playing an organ above the farm.
That is quite the collection.
These are not simply oversized enemies either. Each boss has its own attacks, different phases and unique rewards, meaning players will need to learn their behaviour rather than simply unloading every bullet they have and hoping for the best.
Knowing when to dodge, when to attack and when to create some distance should become an important part of surviving these encounters.
Defeating bosses can also reward players with special equipment and unlock new hats for their farmer, giving you another reason to take on the larger threats beyond simply staying alive.
The chaos looks like it could become even better when playing with friends.
Up to four players can work together, divide farming responsibilities, share supplies and revive one another whenever somebody inevitably gets flattened by an angry vegetable.
Proximity voice chat means you will be able to hear your teammates based on where they are around the farm, which should make splitting up both useful and potentially hilarious when someone suddenly starts screaming from the other side of the field.
Then there is friendly fire.
Combined with ragdoll physics, your friends could potentially become just as dangerous as the monsters themselves. You can even throw beer bottles at another player and knock them over.
That sounds less like efficient farming and more like exactly what happens whenever four friends are given too much freedom in a co-op game.
Co-op Farming Could Get MessyUpgrade, Expand and Try to Pay the Rent
Surviving another night does not mean the work is finished.
Everything you manage to harvest can be sold, allowing you to reinvest your earnings into stronger weapons, better equipment, new seeds and additional storage.
As your farm grows, you can eventually purchase a tractor along with different attachments to help manage larger fields. That progression should help the farming side become more efficient over time, while also encouraging players to take on bigger plots and, naturally, create even more monsters for themselves later.
Your farmer can also level up and unlock different perks, giving players some freedom to shape their character around the way they prefer to play.
That could be particularly useful in co-op, where different players may want to specialise in different areas rather than everybody trying to do exactly the same thing.
Preparation goes beyond weapons and farming equipment too.
Players can cook meals and brew drinks that provide different effects before the next fight begins. That adds another layer of preparation to each cycle, giving you the opportunity to stack the odds slightly more in your favour before night arrives.
There is, however, one very normal problem mixed into all this madness.
Rent.
You need to make sure enough money is kept aside to actually pay what you owe instead of spending every penny on guns, seeds and increasingly questionable farming equipment.
Fail to pay and you will have to deal with the collector.
Exactly what that encounter involves remains part of the fun, but when your normal working day already includes giant spiders, steroid-enhanced livestock and medieval pigs carrying meat cleavers, I would probably avoid finding out what happens when the rent is late.
Harvestin Season Looks Like Farming Gone Completely Wrong
Harvestin Season takes a genre normally associated with relaxing evenings and somehow turns it into something that looks completely unpredictable.
The farming side still appears to be an important part of the experience. You are planting crops, raising animals, expanding your land, upgrading equipment and trying to make enough money to keep everything running.
The difference is that every bit of progress also creates another potential problem for you to deal with once night arrives.
That connection between farming and combat could be what makes the whole idea work.
Instead of the farming and fighting feeling like two completely separate systems, one directly influences the other. Plant more crops and you have more enemies. Improve their value and you make them stronger. Take a bigger risk and you potentially walk away with a much larger reward.
Throw four-player co-op, friendly fire, proximity chat, bizarre weapons and huge boss encounters into that formula and Harvestin Season looks like it could deliver some brilliantly chaotic moments.
There is something genuinely funny about spending an afternoon carefully tending your fields, only to return a few hours later carrying a shotgun because the vegetables have started fighting back.
If you enjoy farming games but have always thought they needed more explosions, ridiculous weapons and giant murderous pigs, Harvestin Season is definitely one worth keeping an eye on.
We will also be getting our hands on Harvestin Season for review, so keep an eye on IndieCritical for our full thoughts once we have had the chance to see just how chaotic farming can really get.
Until then you can wishlist Harvestin Season on Steam now!
Owner of Indie Critical. I’m passionate about highlighting independent voices in film, games, and culture. I focus on honest, thoughtful reviews and love helping great indie projects get the recognition they deserve. When I’m not writing or editing, I’m probably diving into the latest hidden gem or discovering the next big thing in the indie scene.
Written by
Lewis Langton
