Harvest: Massive Encounter Released

By: ARelativelyHotGirl

On: March 4th, 2008

Oxeye Studios – on top of being fine gentlemen – just released their award-winning RTS!

You can download the demo for Mac OSX or Windows here.

"<haowan> fuck awesome game"

Posted in Community, Highly Recommended, Macintosh, Strategy, Windows | Tags: OxeyeStudios

Derek

Bought!
Lackey

This encounter…it’s…**massive!**
Lorne Whiting

Congrats, guys!
Stij

Huh, looks good. I’m not a huge fan of RTS games but this seems pretty fun. I like the whole power generation idea, and the sheer number of enemies you fight is cool.
Izaak

What, is this another…. Humans are Bastards game?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/HumansAreBastards
I don’t like us being portrayed like that.

-Izaak, Lord of the Lotus Clan.
Quetzocotol

Get over it you egotistical bastard!
http://www.oxeyegames.com jeb

Hehe, Izaak, it’s not a political message, you know =)

Thanks everybody, it feels great to be able to release this game!
Zeno

Bah, humans ARE bastards. It’s just our nature.

Anyways, game looks hella sweet. Though, it bugs the hell out of me that it refers to mankind as “she” in that little intro thing.
I should settle on a name

Dangit I think I want this game.
PHeMoX

Looking slick and plays excellent, definitely one I’d recommend!
Pragma

Looks awesome.

Anyone get the name of that third race? All I could make out was “Hepheastus”, “Ares” and “YouTube”.
http://www.oxeyegames.com jeb

Pragma: It’s “Poseidon”, and it’s the name of the planets, not races.
crackers

“Bah, humans ARE bastards. Itâ€™s just our nature.”

Humans are CUNTS. They eat us poor biscuity types like we were nothing.
PoV

Neat intro. :)
Patrick

Sick, a Mac download! I’m so gonna review this.
gustav

congrats on finishing it!
Gr.Viper

Best-looking “tower defence” game I’ve seen so far…
http://0xdeadc0de.org Eclipse

meh, it have near nothing of strategic, but it’s massive!
Sub-Actuality

I don’t think I’ve bought a game this quickly in a long time. Reminds me stylistically somehow of Gene Wars, which is a huge plus. And it’s simple, but engaging. Great game.
haowan

God damn it dude. Gene Wars was AWESOME. Nice call.
Nudz

Pfft. Humans are just humans.
MrBig

Mini-Review time:

This is one of the better Tower Defense style games out now. I played the Beta quite a bit and enjoyed it enough to buy it. I think the theme suits this type of game well also. The game play is very simple to grasp and dangerously addictive (especially if you like Tower Defense games and to a lesser extent RTSes with a minute amount of micro management) but will require some quick thinking and work if you want to survive past wave 20. There are also a handful of different game modes and game environments to both exploit and defend. Besides the bread and butter of the game there are also some great awards that you can earn (think Xbox 360 achievements) requiring the player to complete simple tasks like defend against your first wave of enemies to more difficult ones such as defend against 100 waves and earn over 500 colonial credits (this is just an example). To further enhance the gameplay and compliment it’s longevity and value there is an online scoreboard for all of the different game modes and environments. On top of all of this the graphics are very clean and do their job nicely while the sound is minimal (some decent voice acting though), the game ran smoothly even on my 4 year old computer.

If you’re still not sure then download the demo. This is a game that can be picked up and learned in 5 – 10 minutes but will take much more time to master. Be warned, it can be addictive.

Cheers!
Bajatar

It’s a really nice game. Graphics, gameplay and sound are indeed very smooth. I enjoyed it for a while. Personally I could not care less about scores and highscores though. A mission mode would have made it even better ;).
http://www.modernpunches.org JJ

Simple graphics. Cute sound! Haha. It’s super fun!
MrBig

@Bajatar,

Honestly I think there’s enough story there for you to use your imagination and just enjoy the gameplay involved. Adding a mission mode is a neat idea but I think it would have turned into more people whining for more units and abilities when this already has great gameplay and isn’t really aspiring to be another Starcraft or Warcraft (which is fine because they’ve already been done!). The great thing is if OxEye Studios ever did decide to add missions to the game (perhaps adding a strategic puzzle element) they always could later on as an update, but so far the game is just right for the money. Best Tower Defense style game I’ve played in a long while… I really think they hit the nail on the head by using the Alien/UFO theme and by keeping it simple while also becoming very intense.
thewreck

Hey Bajatar! Think of the “Awards” as missions!

Super nice review btw!
Lim-Dul

Nice game. Reminds me of NetStorm, one of my favorite RTS-es. However, since NetStorm is abandonware now and can be downloaded for free, has an active multiplayer community and has probably a bit more depth I’d still prefer it over this. =)

http://www.netstormhq.com/
muku

I really, really like the graphics. Remind me of Starcraft, which is a good thing, and the effects are pretty. Indeed, the entire presentation seems very polished. I still have to play more to really be sure about gameplay (can only get up to wave ~20), but it certainly is fun and also addictive in a tower defense sort of way. In any case, the energy system is pure genius, it really makes you think about your infrastructure in a way reminiscent of The Settlers.

For my taste, however, the game lacks a bit in variety. More enemy types and defense turrets with deeper upgrade paths might have made me enjoy it even more (see e.g. Onslaught, the Flash TD game, for a game with a great upgrade and combo system).

But what really kills it for me is that the game usually hangs just before my last building is destroyed :( Kind of defeats the point of a game which is based around highscores and awards since mine just don’t get saved. I hope that gets fixed (this is on Win2k here).

But still (especially since other people don’t seem to get that hanging bug), I heartily recommend it to everyone who enjoys TD games (wouldn’t really call it an RTS since you can’t build mobile units). I have been wishing for a good non-Flash one for a while now since those always start to lag when more than a handful units are on screen.
Lim-Dul

My comment has not been posted because of the “url filter” so I’ll post a similar one again.

I like the game but I won’t buy it. Why? Because it reminds me very much of NetStorm which is one of my favorite RTS-es and probably one of the first modern tower-defense games. You can download and play it (even on the internet) for free!
Tell me if you are interested in NetStorm because I need somebody to play online with. :-D
Of course the graphics aren’t too good but the gameplay is much deeper.

Link: netstormhq.com
muku

Gnaah, it has done it again. I’ve made it to level 30, and when I was rolled over, the game hung. Nasty.

But it *is* addictive.
MrBig

@Lim-Dul

Well NetStorm is actually a totally different game and REQUIRES other human players, otherwise it’s a complete bore. Harvest is much more intuitive and easier to get into. I just found that Harvest is far more enjoyable and the pick-up-and-play mechanics are nothing shy of brilliant for a Tower Defense game. Honestly though I haven’t appreciated a game like this since StarCraft although for different reasons of course, the Tower Defense genre really needed a game like Harvest though because the theme is the absolute best excuse to have a tower defense game. Alien Invaders and UFO’s make for the perfect enemies to defend from and by the time you reach wave 20 – 30 you’ll see more variety in enemies, but if you have what it takes and can make it to wave 1000 you won’t have much time to appreciate anything and just be sweating buckets as the waves pound the hell outta your defenses. Quite a spectacle… or a monocle if you prefer. ;-)

@Muku,

Haven’t had any problems with the game so far. It’s been running smooth as silk for me… be sure to let the developers at OxEye know the particulars of your problem and give them your computers specs so they can look into it. From what I’ve gathered they’ve put a lot of time into the game to give it such a polished finish. :-)

Cheers!
http://www.oxeyegames.com jeb

MrBig: To you, I’m Sarah Jessica Parker <3
MrBig

@jeb:

Wasn’t she married to Spider-Man? ;-) Oh, well I heard they got divorced so I guess it’s fair game. *LOL* Not a big fan of Sex and the City, but amazingly I’m a fan of the two capitalized words in Sex and the City.

Speaking of which, that gives me an all new (or perhaps not, I just haven’t seen it) idea for a tower defense style game where the player must guard an egg (bear with me) from an onslaught of sperm (and perhaps other nasties… sure it’s disgusting but I haven’t seen it done yet. The first wave could start off with a couple of those “Homer Simpson type sperm” that aren’t too bright and can’t quite find their mark (if you’re thinking of the episode I’m thinking of then you’ll have no choice but to smile at the idea).

Hmmm… definitely have to write this one down, or if someone else makes it at least have the courtesy to offer me a free copy for the damn idea! ;-P

Cheers!
th15

Excellent energy conduit system but what concerns me is the tiny number of buildings available. That and the fact that there isn’t any terrain to funnel stuff around (at least, not on the demo planet) raises questions of how much complexity can arise in the game. So far it seems to me that the challenge is to keep expanding at a rate fast enough to get you the credits you need to defend your structures. I like that aspect plenty, choosing between an interlinked spiderweb style or a self-sufficient satellite base system is something we’ve never seen in a tower defence game.

Well maybe I’m just missing content in the full game, does someone want to write about any new mechanics in the advanced planets that isn’t in the demo?
Sub-Actuality

I’ve only played each of the 3 planets for a short while (I’m not very good yet, so I’m sticking to the first planet mostly!), but here’s what I’ve observed:

The second (ice) planet seems to have powerful gusts of wind occasionally which blow projectiles and enemies one direction or another. Other than this, it is a large plain without obstacles, much like the first planet. (The wind effect is really cool though, it even blows the smoke and debris from blasted UFOs around).

The third planet is definitely the most strategically significant, it has huge craters which can’t be flown/travelled over, so you could potentially set up bottlenecks between them.

Overall I’m very happy that I bought the game, I really can’t explain why but it has a very pure, simple appeal to it that fills me with reminiscence and is very, very engaging.
muku

Ha, and now I’m up to level 40! (Kinda funny I always seem to die at the full tens?) This time it even saved it. But I’ll be sure to report that hanging bug, if it hasn’t been yet.
lecarl

i gathered all the minerals and built a system that can take all 10 waves at the same time.
Phasma Felis

Playing the demo. I dunno, it’s fun, but I just can’t get into it… I think I’m not sufficiently excited by high scores. I want concrete goals. On Normal mode, I realize around wave 20 or 30 that I can’t possibly “win” and I get bored. On Wave, there’s no pressure or tension because I can take as long as I want to harvest and build an impenetrable defense.

I really want a mode that gives you a pre-set scenario and says “survive this”. I guess Rush does that, but it ain’t in the demo. :(
Phasma Felis

And it’s a shame, because I’m really getting into the art of building and fine-tuning laser networks. If they ever do a sequel with more scenario-based play, I will be all over it.