Puz: Harvest Lines [by WildSnake Studios]

Harvest Lines should come with a warning label.  Not a bad one, just one to let you know that after playing this game you'll be hearing "Use the force Luke" and "Bond, James Bond" for days.  The sound of the game is quite solid, and the interesting voices that were used in creating it makes all of the voices that you hear quite memorable.

The game is at least as well done as the sound.  In Harvest Lines the goal is to line up vegetables in lines of at least 5 on a large hexagon that is full of smaller hexagons.  The smaller hexagons serve to provide you with places to put your vegetables.  Every time you move one vegetable, three more vegetables will appear randomly on the board.  This means that you must try to carefully move your vegetables and then be lucky enough not to have the new vegetables appear in the way of where you are building your line of vegetables.

The biggest highlight of the game is clearly the wonderful graphics.  The website states that the graphics are "clay-styled."  It is an interesting distinction as the graphics look very similar to the classic clay graphic based shooter Platypus.  It is amazing how well WildSnake did in making these graphics look like clay.  Other than the detail of the graphics being a bit too fine for clay you'd think you were really looking at a game that was done entirely in clay.

Overall Harvest Lines does a great job of presenting a fun little game that I think everyone should try out...if for nothing else than to fill your head full of phrases like "I love the smell of Napalm in the morning."  Judging by the high score table it seems quite a few people have run into the same problem I have, that the game becomes very quickly too hard as vegetables fill up the board and leave you no ability to move them around or to get 5 in a row.  The online high score list shows that only 6 people so far have gotten past level 6 in either the Arcade (play against the clock) or Classic (no time limit) modes.  In fact there are only 2 people beyond those original six who have even gotten to the 6th level.  Based on the scores and my own personal experience I found the game to be a little too hard, and due to having a very long hour trial period in the game, you should be able to play it to your hearts content with just the demo. 

After looking at all factors I debated for a long time on whether to rate this game an 8 or a 7.  Certainly the graphics are very well done as is the entire game with plenty of polish that shows the high quality work that is done by WildSnake Studios.  However the feeling that there wasn't a lot of game play available in the game and the difficulty being rather steep lead me to believe that despite a wonderful presentation this is a game that most people will not find lasting play value in.

Added: May 7th 2004
Reviewer: Russell Carroll
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