Harvest Skies: Playtest 1.0 Opinion

Flying in many games only involves, that, flying. You don't get to do a lot more than just sitting in the cockpit and flying around, and engaging in combat on simulators that have that focus. But one has to remember that aircraft were built for many, many reasons: from transporting passengers, cargo, taking pictures, evacuating civilians from emergencies, etc.

Harvest Skies remembers that aircraft have one critical use that we all benefit from in our everyday life: agriculture. Without crop dusters and irrigation, we would not have the modern day agricultural wonder industry that we have. It puts you in the shoes of a lone crop duster pilot that is starting this business from the ground-up.

The game had been in development for quite a while, but for the first time they have decided to do a public playtest that a large amount of people have been able to access. I tested this "demo" version and, while my excitement for the game stays untouched, it is clear that hosting a playtest session was the best idea the team could have had.

THE GAMEPLAY

You start outside the hangar where your aircraft is sitting, with the simple task of opening the hangar doors as your single initial objective. It will soon become clear that the fuse on the electrical box is blown, so you will have to go around the place to find a replacement so you can finally get to see your crop duster.

This teaches the players the basics of object manipulation within the game and how to engage with the basic systems put in place. I do like this approach, and it is one I have seen used on some other similar games that have object manipulation systems like this one.

After you open the hangar, you will find your birthday present inside: A crop-dusting biplane. It is covered from head to toe in balloons and decor, all of which you will have to put away to start operating the aircraft. The game teaches you basics such as cleaning garbage, and fueling your aircraft right before you set off on your initial flight.

Everything about gameplay on the ground is pretty intuitively explained, but I did get a bit confused from time to time with the controls to manipulate valves and certain objects that involve the mixture creating process.

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FLYING

Flying the aircraft is pretty normal, it feels exactly how you think it would with one very noticeable exception: drag and speed increases during diving maneuvers. Since you will be doing constant orbits and several passes over fields, you will find yourself on climbs and descents quite often, and you will immediately notice just how insanely fast you gain speed during a dive.

It is something that took me out of the experience of flying quite a bit, since I assumed the aircraft would not gain speed that dramatically due to its nature as a biplane. This led to every crash I had while playing, and I mean that. This behavior resulted in every crash, as I did not have any issues during any other part of the envelope.

When this is resolved, I am sure that the game will feel exceptionally great to fly, especially since it already feels quite alright.

DUSTING

This is the best part of the game, by far. You will have to create your mixes on the ground as per required by the contract you will be fulfilling. This mini game is nice, but as I stated earlier, the controls for the valves can be confusing at the beginning, but this is something that can be easily solved with better instructions and indications.

Once in the air, the field you will be working on gets highlighted. As you make your approach, there is a new UI that makes itself known.

You have a god-eye camera, an altitude meter with colors that mark your efficiency at different altitudes and the optimal approach, and the covered area during your dusting that gets highlighted in a similar way as City's Skylines district drawing tool.

This is by far the most well-thought out aspect of the game. It makes dusting an exciting and engaging act, while making clear which areas you have covered and how much you have left to cover. Kudos to the developers, I love this part of the game to hell and back.

Now, to something a bit less pleasant.

HITCHES AND AREAS OF IMPROVEMENT

Several users, including me, have experienced constant hitches during ground gameplay in the vicinity of the hangar. While I do not know exactly what is happening, I think it has something to do with the physic objects (trash) being spawned in and out as you move closer or further away from the hangar. My rig is the following:

• CPU: Ryzen 5600X3D

• GPU: Nvidia 5070 Ti

• RAM: 32GB DDR4 @3200MT/s

• Storage: NVME SSD X2, SATA SSD X1

I should not be experiencing hitches like these with my current set up, so I hope the developers can find the source of this issue.

Aside from this, the only other area that needs work is the pause menu. It is bare bones and lacks polish. The volume slider looks quite janky and there are only basic graphical adjustments, with a clear lack of an FOV slider. The FOV should most likely be divided between Ground FOV and Flying FOV. The default setting for the on-foot gameplay feels very restrictive and claustrophobic, while the third person flying FOV feels just right.

That being said, I think these are all manageable tasks for a team that has such a clear vision and a great commitment to making this game the best it can be.

Harvest Skies is a game I will be looking forward to, and I am sure that I am not alone in that. Thanks to the developers for allowing us, the players, to test the game. I hope you find our feedback helpful, at least somewhat. We are rooting for all of you.

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About the Author

Santiago "Cubeboy" Cuberos

Longtime aviation fanatic with particular preference towards military aviation and its history. Said interests date back to the early 2000s, leading into his livelong dive into civil and combat flight simulators. He has been involved in a few communities, but only started being active around the mid 2010s. Joined as a Spanish to English translator in 2017, he has been active as a writer and the co-founder of Skyward ever since. Twitter | Discord: Cubeboy