Hey all, welcome to a new season of The Comic Commish. There's a bit of pre-amble for this one, so sit tight:
Last year, and the year before it, I was fortunate enough to be gifted a premium membership by a good pal of mine, @omghisam. I don't have a whole lot of disposable income, and am fairly parsimonious besides, so this gesture was greatly appreciated. It helped me grow closer to the staff and the community here, and would eventually help cement my place as a moderator. As a mod, however, I no longer need the generous support of my friend. (Like the proverbial roadies, mods need full backstage access to do their jobs properly.) This left me with a quandary: do I continue The Comic Commish and continue to support those who have supported me, or do I simply find some other feature to occupy my time once every month?
I realized that, while the premium accounts were gifts, so too are a number of Steam games I've been given in the past. I still have a lot to make up to the magnanimous souls who thought enough about me to give me free shit, which is never something I take lightly. (Even if it is just @zombiepie trolling me with a 35 cent copy of Bad Rats.) From now until December, and two for this month (I slept on January's entry, my bad. I blame Lightning Returns), I'm going to create a Comic Commish for each game in a series of twelve gifts received from both present and past members of this community.
The format I'm using is both a mix of a Brief Jaunt and the usual MS Paint squiggles. The Brief Jaunt will cover the first few hours of the game, while the comics will attempt to prognosticate on where the story is heading.
January: Harvester
DigiFX Interactive's Harvester is a 1996 FMV-enhanced graphic adventure game, emphasis on the "graphic". Purpose-built to mess with moral crusaders and "games encourage violence in children" amateur psychiatrists, Harvester's a very gory and very silly satirical horror game that places the protagonist in an unusual small American town devoid of his memories. You might recognize the game from this Unprofessional Friday episode, briefly but memorably played by Vinny. It was gifted to me by palbert TeflonBilly.
Harvester is an odd adventure game, and I don't just mean the messed up story and characters. You're on an invisible timer of sorts, there's combat, there's lots of ways to die prematurely (so save often!), and you can punch and kill anyone in the game. If they're with other NPCs, you're immediately arrested and sent to the chair, though if they're alone there's a chance (not a certain one) that you'll get away with it. You can also commit minor crimes, which simply uses up one of your three "strikes" and moves time ahead to the following day. I have no idea if you're still able to complete the game at that point, as we've been told that the marriage, the bake sale and the "blood drive" all occur at some point in a week's time. I imagine we need to get into the Lodge before that happens.
That segues to what the rest of the game appears to involve: the Lodge, on the following day, gives us a slightly more antisocial task to perform. It's simply petty vandalism, but they'll get more severe and criminal as we continue. We aren't told of any alternative, so I think the game's simply prodding the player to see what they're capable.
I haven't got far enough into the game yet to know precisely where it's going, but here's three guesses:
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