Harvest

Harvest
Release date: Mar 14, 2022	Author: Oi27	Download: ver.1.9.2 (1304 downloads) (38 downloads of previous versions)
Genre: Exploration [?] Game:	Difficulty: Vanilla [?]	Average runtime: 2:27 Average collection: 60%
Read Me: [None]	Forum Thread: Release Thread	Rating:

Description

Famine has struck the Galactic Federation! Several resource extraction teams have gone missing on the bountiful Planet Grané, detected to have the highest concentration of biofuel in the galaxy. It's Samus's job to figure out why - and procure the resources for humanity. Battle a new threat in your quest for knowledge.... and escape with your life.
***
2nd-Place winner in OatsnGoats' ROMhacking contest (2021)

Screenshots

Ratings and Reviews

By dagit on Mar 23, 2022 (

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44% in 2:13

This hack has a lot of original ideas. Interesting new mechanics. I would say more but I don't want to put spoilers in my review.

I would probably be giving this hack a rating of 5 except, I got really annoyed and frustrated with one particular boss fight that felt like it was entirely RNG. I probably died 8 times before beating it. And the time I beat it, I didn't feel like I earned it. It just felt like I got lucky. I'm not a fan of RNG heavy boss fights.

There's also some bugs with items in the early game. If you come across item locations very early they will be bugged out. I also felt railroaded near the end of the game. I thought for sure I was working towards a particular item and instead I ended up stuck where the only way forward was a boss fight. This was disappointing as I had planned to revisit more of the world and the level design prevented that without any warning.

Overall it's a great hack that I will recommend to people, but I also can't give it 5 orbs with some of the flaws above.

By Ikkeys1 on Mar 26, 2022 (

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69% in 1:34

By jamablues on Mar 31, 2022 (

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44% in 4:00

To be honest I almost stopped playing this game, and then I found the room I needed AND BAM!!. There are a ton of great ideas in this hack! It's one of the best ones I have played. Its challenging and makes you think :D
Thanks for making this!! Keep up the good work!

By KPF on Apr 01, 2022 (

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No completion stats.

I hope this is a new version.
I will try it one more time.

By Tundain on Apr 01, 2022 (

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65% in 3:56

I do like this one, there's soo much custom stuff. The new mechanics are fun to use. The final boss was also a lot of fun. The only things that make me rate this 4 orbs instead of 5 are:
-Red crateria, just doesn't work well
-progression wasn't very clear (but maybe that's just me)
- New mechanics took a while to figure out, I remember staying in a room for 10 minutes until I remembered a something I hadn't tried yet (and that something isn't something players use very often in hack playtroughs)
But definitely give this one a try, you're not gonna regret what you'll find!

By Sapphron on Apr 01, 2022 (

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39% in 2:18

Really weird hack, I liked it.
Unique music and areas with some really well-utilized mechanics.
Strawman buddy was very cool and unexpected, and there are a few nice twists. Final boss is a bit hard, died once or twice but easy to get the hang of, especially with enough e-tanks. Pretty good replayability with not too much linearity and cool paths.
Recommend.
Finished.
second playthrough was 1:42 71%

By Exister on Apr 02, 2022 (

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No completion stats.

Very very good hack. Subverts expectations at the beginning twice over and then proceeds to do so throughout the entire hack. There are so many neat moments, cool mechanics, and overall solid design that the hack is just an absolute blast. The only issue I have is that the second area is a bit cumbersome to wade through on a first playthrough but there's a very easy sequence break to kind of skip it so it ends up working out just fine. Highly highly recommend to any and all, play it and keep at it!

By Sickwood on Apr 24, 2022 (

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No completion stats.

Another ridiculously good hack from the Oats' contest. Between Biohazard, Hotlands, Fugue, Cryo, and now Harvest, probably the best contest ever. I loved all the special room states, insane ASM, custom enemies, speed booster charging stations, and especially the story for this one. Plenty of hidden secrets and a really good item count for the size. The final boss involving the long awaited item was impressive. My favorite area was definitely the factory. The only things that I kinda didn't like was the cramped terrain and not having the long awaited item. Now the new substitute movement for that item was very cool and fit that hack perfectly, and the work around for utilizing PBs was very cool as well. I just kept wanting to attack terrain and do stuff with said item, due to habit, but the story made up for it in the end. Can't wait for the sequel and anything by Oi27 (Polarity kicked ass).

By therealsusan on May 06, 2022 (

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49% in 2:54

Awesome hack! There's so much brought to the table with new features I'm surprised it didn't win the contest.

Reason I'm giving it 4* instead of 5* is there's some mildly confusing aspects and it feels like there should've been another area to utilize items.

By Zhs2 on May 20, 2022 (

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57% in 2:11

For an oats contest entry that placed second I honestly expected better, especially stacked against 1st place hands hack and 3rd place hotlands. The innovative custom ASM does not save this hack from some bad design decisions, such as needing to destroy many missile blocks with only a max of 10 missiles at the beginning, and the ease of which you can accidentally enter the underwater endgame area without gravity suit and not be able to escape to pick up more equipment before a boss you will be REQUIRED to use savestates to beat without said gravity suit. (At least, I presume that's what you can pick up. I don't actually know if this is true because I never found it.) Game design clearly escapes the creator if my experience with Polarity was anything to compare this to, albeit at least in Polarity the enjoyability picked up and stayed up after seeking out several hidden passages before slamming headlong into one murderous Ridley. Here the enjoyability rises from the intro all the way into the factory (the best area imo) and peaks at power bombs, then goes back downhill into said contrived boss that wasn't actually fun. Sorry, but a few more hints to the player about points of no return would have gone a long way into salvaging my rating for this hack.

By Kremit44 on Jun 05, 2022 (

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57% in 2:38

It's a solid and unique hack. It has an excellent custom boss mechanics and interactions with some neat features that make it stand out. The roll is amusing but broken as pressing shoot for me on both bsnes and SNES9x would lock the game. It seems I only had the issue in reading the reviews so I don't want to knock the game too much for it. I've had issues with XBOX controllers and another rom hack so maybe that's it. I thought about a 3 due to some jank and it being a short linear adventure but I feel it's unique and well done enough to deserve a 4. A really fun playthrough that stands out for it's unique features.

By Zincoshine on Sep 10, 2022 (

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No completion stats.

This won second place on the oatsngoats competition, a competition where the third and first place are among the highest rated hacks... yet this has a significantly poorer average score that puts it in the range of mediocre hacks. Why is that? Well, its for two reasons. First, the hack has placed style over substance. You see, Oi27 is a truly gifted advanced hacker, but he has one weakness, he had no talent for the most basic type of hacking: gameplay level design. The result is a hack that does some of the most phenomenal stuff I've ever seen in a hack, while having a level design that, in terms of gameplay, feels like its something taken straight out of 2010. Second, the hack's shortcomings can be completely overridden by professional speedrunners who will not even be able to notice them. This is exactly what happened with the oatsngoats competition. The guy in charge, oatsngoats, is a professional speedrunner. He ever noticed the good stuff and blew right past all of the problems.... but there's a 99% chance that the person reading this review is either:
A) not as proficient in metroid as oatsngoats is and will therefore not have a good time
B) the person reading this has already played the hack.

It doesn't help either that this hack has been miscategorized as being vanilla difficulty. RT-55J and Zhs2 do a great job of explaining some of the problems with this hack and what you will feel if you're just a normal gamer like them looking for something to have fun playing. Avoid this.

By RT-55J on Sep 14, 2022 (

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64% in 2:28

This is a very weird hack. It's very funny and clever, but very weird.

It starts off wanting you to like it, and you do want to like it, but it makes itself hard to like at the beginning. For instance, activating the first event either requires you to be incurious and lucky, or to solve a bizarrely difficult spatial reasoning puzzle. Not too long after that, progression is locked behind a bizarrely obtuse item puzzle. Both of these moments had me scratching my head for a while, even as a person who had partially watched people play this hack before and generally knew what to expect.

Anyhow, once you get past those initial hurdles and make it to the third area, the hack becomes a blast. Again, it is very clever and very funny, so once things get rolling the cleverness and funniness start to click and you start enjoying the hack as much as it wants you to.

And then it just kinda ends.

Mind you, it's a really good ending, and I don't mind short hacks, but I was kinda left wanting more. Thankfully, this feels like the kind of hack that ends up being much better on a replay.

By RX-78-2 on Feb 28, 2023 (

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77% in 1:27

I really like this hack.. I know some of the tiles are vanilla just recolored but it's still nice. level design is nice, difficulty isn't too high, exploration is fun and enjoyable and very entertaining and I love some new features that were added incorporated into this hack.. and the final boss fight was also nice despite being STUCK IN MORPH LOCK :(. but other than that, nice work oi.. you did well on this hack

Finished
Recommend

By sbelmont85 on Mar 13, 2023 (

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87% in 1:48

Its short and felt very unfinished, map layout was cluttered, bosses although some new graphics felt very alpha stage in development, some graphics needed significant improvements. I'd say it's a 20% completed good hack. I really commend the developer. It's hard to rate a hack lower knowing all the hard work that goes into these to develop but was left wanting a lot in the end, mostly with map layout and underdeveloped concepts.

Recommend a play though maybe once.
Difficulty: Vanilla
Rating mostly impacted by completeness and map organization.

Spoiler:
Over all some neat ideas, really liked the charge spineshark stations and the new boss mechanics, item removal and keep-aways were entertaining. Also the controlled bomb locations of enemies was a neat puzzle concept and end run had unique mechanics. Hugh pluses for these ideas.

Quick Summary of the meaning of my SM hack ratings:
5 orbs: SM hacks within the 80% to 100% (90% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; SM hacks for outstanding wholesome playing experiences and at most minor inconveniences.
4 orbs: SM hacks within the 60% to 80% (70% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Well done SM hacks with noticeable design problems.
3 orbs: SM hacks within the 40% to 60% (50% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Normal decent average SM hacks.
2 orbs: SM hacks within the 20% to 40% (30% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Overall messy, confusing, or punishing SM hacks with some upsides.
1 orb : SM hacks within the 00% to 20% (10% ± 10%) range of perceived perfection; Ruthlessly unplayable, broken, or barely from the original game changed SM hacks.

By MarioFanGamer on May 08, 2023 (

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No completion stats.

It's definitively a semi-serious since the hack's promise is summed up as "A trickster scarecrow stole almost all of Samus's items and Samus tries to get them back." which is so un-Metroid for the silliness but at the same time, the hack does take itself quite seriously as evident in the Factory. It works given the Scarecrow's (aka the Big Bad's) personality.

I mostly know this hacks from Oats's stream so I knew the one or another secret as well as the rough sequence, though the hack has received some changes since them (most notably the final boss which originally was quite unfinsihed), not to mention I've also forgotten some secrets and he also broke some sequences (e.g. getting up a Ripper shaft without Ice) while I want to experience it more less normally.

What makes this hack stand out so much is that it'll take a while until you get certain power ups but you're quick to find that you're given alternatives. The biggest one is Morph which usually is the first or second item in any Metroid game (if you don't start with it already, that is) but here, it takes a while to find it and you're spared from getting Springball, which functions as pure Morph (i.e. no jump nor bombs) but with crouching hitbox, stolen (it's mostly a workaround of the issue that Samus is normally three tiles but two tile gaps put here in crouching mode whose only option would be to Morphe, though it fits the hack — and Samus personality and player's expectation — quite well).
This results in quite a bit of out of box thinking like you're introduced to enemies which can destroy bomb blocks pretty early on and must use them for some puzzles.
I do feel like it could have been improved if Missiles were able to reveal blocks much like in Dread which too has Morph as a fairly late item.

I do feel like the pathfinding can be a bit of a weakness (in part because you have no way of revealing blocks until later in the game). The hack doesn't require you to know wall jumps nor IBJs at all (you can, however, break the sequence that way, though, as I happen to do it at times), though sometimes, I feel like it could be communicated better like I only managed to get up a shaft with wall jumps when the hack makes it clear you have to go up there.
In particular, it's very easy to get to the final boss when you're still missing some major items. There is a safe station, at least, so you can just reset the game but unlike the official Metroid games, you have to be actively trying to beat the game with a few major items missing (e.g. Grapple Beam in Super Metroid, Wave Beam in Zero Mission) but here, it looks like it's part of the NORMAL sequence. Admittingly, this could intentional given that an item which helps this section is nearby but it still feels very sudden.

Aesthetically, this is mostly vanilla, both in tilesets and musically. Custom graphics exists sometimes but they're by far the minority and music also is limited in a few places (the intro, if a bit annoying, the final boss, good, but most notably, the Factory). However, there is a huge utilisation of having two foreground layers which results overlapping tiles, giving some variety in the otherwise vanilla tilesets (a downside is that it looks ugly when X-Ray is active and there often are no backgrounds visible; Phazon has a similar issue in one of its regions but hides this by deactivating X-Ray).

As an aside, you can softlock yourself in the escape sequence if you're lacking Space Jump, though you aren't forced to reset the console, at least, and it's also a bit out of the way.

All in all, this is a very recommend hack to be played even as a Super Metroid beginner but I also recommend you to play the original first to familiarise with a couple mechanics (Shinespark comes up quite often, for example).

By FPzero on Feb 10, 2024 (

)

71% in 1:57

There's something unnerving about playing Harvest. Its level design has a kind of chaotic energy you don't really find elsewhere, with tons of claustrophobic spaces, wraparounds, parallel paths, randomly breakable terrain, strange tiling choices and more. Navigating this world is made all the more challenging due to the long absence of a certain round series staple until the end of the game. Accidentally stumbling across X-Ray was a godsend because there are secrets around every corner, with secrets inside of other secrets hiding plenty of powerful gear upgrades.

The actual path through the game is surprisingly quick even though all of your major upgrades are present. It's just that most are considered optional. I think you can get to the ending sequence with nothing more than Missiles, Power Bombs, Charge, Ice, Speed Booster and Grapple, but doing so really only lets you see about half of the game's world. So much of what Harvest offers is optional, which I suppose lends itself well to replayability, but does also obscure the critical path. You can be exploring a far area for a while and come to realize that there's actually nothing critical to proceed there. The beginning of the game has you scrounging for powerups that drip feed themselves to you, but once you get to the Factory you're suddenly in for a deluge of items in rapid succession, and if you explore well you'll come out of there equipped to handle pretty much everything else the game has to offer. I'm glad I explored because doing so gave me the tools to beat the hack's final boss without too much difficulty. It's just that the pace of upgrades feels a bit lopsided.

Speaking of upgrades and explorations, man that lack of Morph Ball and chaotic room design with many hidden or obscured paths make exploring a bit of a pain. It's easy to be going in circles, especially at the start of the game, as you wait for the bomb enemies to maybe unveil some mandatory hidden path forward. The worst culprit is probably the path that connects east and west Silo, with the elevator between Feelds and Silo not far behind. Plus, the bomb enemies do a whole energy tank of damage, are all over the place, and don't really drop any meaningful health. I found myself at low energy and resources multiple times throughout my playthrough's midgame, and it felt bad every time I had to sit and farm some respawning enemies.

It's a shame that the hack feels pretty rough at times because the technical skills on display here are amazing. The item loss sequence is cool to watch, the new enemies are interesting, the alternate ways to use items like Charge Beam and Power Bombs are genius, the final boss fight is super impressive... Everything new feels incredible to witness and are really good reasons to stick with the game to the end despite its stumbling points. I do recommend playing the hack to experience what it has to offer, just be prepared to get lost in the corn fields for a while.

By H A M on Apr 18, 2024 (

)

No completion stats.

megalovania

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