Harvester (video game)/YMMV

• Complete Monster: A whole town of them, but none stand out more than Mr. Pottsdam. From masturbating to his own daughter (which we get to see in all its splendor), to pawning Stephanie to you so he can marry into an unlimited supply of meat, to kidnapping Karin and burying her alive, all just to earn his way into the Lodge.
  • Steve himself may become this at the end of the game if you choose the bad ending. The first thing he does upon being freed from the virtual reality is murdering some random woman and devouring her finger.
• Crazy Awesome: Colonel Buster Monroe, the shell-shocked commie hunter.
• Critical Dissonance: When the game came out, it didn't sell very well, and was poorly received by critics. Nowadays, people generally seem to agree that it is competently made and actually has some interesting concepts. The implementation of real time combat in certain sections is still unpopular, however.
• Crosses the Line Twice: So so much. Even when the game tries to be "serious", the game loves the dance across the line. Often times, the player will likely struggle between being horrified and wanting to laugh.
• Demonic Spiders: Jimmy James, the paperboy, is a damage sponge who can kill you in quite literally a second if you don't have the right weapon.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Lodge part of the game seems like it was rushed through development. Many of its ideas seems like they were squeezed in at the last minute and come across as rather half-finished.
  • Others may find it to be the game's Best Level Ever for throwing everything out the window and going completely insane with the concept of the game.
• Ensemble Darkhorse:
  • Mr. Pottsdam, due to the funny moments stemming from his meat obsession.
  • Sheriff Duane Dwayne and Deputy Loomis as well.
  • Out of the townspeople with minimal importance to the plot, Clem Parsons and Colonel Buster Monroe seem to be the most popular.
  • Edna Fitzpatrick as well for being one of the few sane people in Harvest.
• Family-Unfriendly Aesop: Deliberately Invoked to show how awful the people in Harvest really are. Some highlights of their moral code: it's all right to murder people. Mercy and charity are lies. Violence is always the best way. And that's just the sample platter.
  • Then again, the family shouldn't be anywhere near this game.
• Game-Breaker: The scythe. It can kill just about any enemy in around three or four hits.
• Good Bad Bugs: If you kill Jimmy James the paperboy and then go back into your house, then you won't get arrested regardless of whether or not you have the "Get Out of Jail Free" card.
• Memetic Mutation: Retsupurae's Wrongpurae of Harvester appears to have started popularizing "You always were a kidder, Steve" (the oft-repeated response to Steve insisting his amnesia is real) and "BYE" (the almost universal prompt to end a conversation).
  • It helps that "BYE" is a very appropriate response to any of the creepier residents of Harvest.
• Non Sequitur Scene: The Wasp Woman is practically a Big Lipped Alligator Character. She contributes nothing to the plot, you don’t have to visit her house for any reason, and she’s the only character Steve can kill without any repercussions. Which then leads to another example when she turns out to actually be half-wasp.
• Player Punch: The game frequently highlights the consequences of Steve's actions (albeit very exaggerated), but none works quite like the fallout from Day 5's little bit of vandalism. Steve burns down Edna's Diner. Edna is so distraught that she hangs both herself and Karin, IF you had just saved a few days ago.
  • Without giving anything away, the Bad Ending is the epitome of this in the game, also serving as a You Bastard moment for the player.
• Scrappy Mechanic: Real-time combat in a point 'n click rarely works very well. This is not one of the times it does.
• Special Effects Failure: The game's many attempts at gore fall short; the effects were rotoscoped in afterwards, with many looking like they were edited in two minutes with MS Paint.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Character: Aside from her first and only appearance (which is optional to begin with), the Wasp Woman has absolutely no impact on the plot. If you talk with her about her philosophy on wasps, there is some Foreshadowing there, but that's about it.
• Values Resonance: Harvester's satire has surprisingly aged well because of the fact that Moral Guardians are still using violent video games as a scapegoat for big murder crimes and are still under the belief that they create serial killers.
• What Do You Mean, It Wasn't Made on Drugs?: The Lodge, all of it. It's like the developers just threw in random elements of the game, or that that part of the game isn't even finished.