Project Harvest
Document Type
Game
Abstract
Project Harvest is a first-person psychological-horror roguelite about how we treat the people we control. Each run through a shifting corn maze is framed as an experiment run by an evil scientist, but the deeper subject is the player’s relationship to their avatar: how easily we risk, reset, and rationalize harm when the body isn’t “ours.” Notes scattered through the maze—from past subjects and from the primary antagonist—push this idea from different angles: mirror shards that ask you to reassemble a self, “watching stones” that demand you declare what defines you, a whispering well that tempts you to throw identity tokens away. The promise of an exit, the threat that there isn’t one, and fourth-wall breaking notes are used as instruments to make the choice to play and complicity it involves visible.
The project starts from a simple belief: we learn from play. With that, the developer accepts responsibility to do more than entertain—to hold up a mirror and offer room to grow without preaching. The maze rearranges each run, but the question stays put: if we condemn the scientist for treating a subject as disposable, what does it mean when we do the same to our character in the name of “gameplay”? Built in Godot, Project Harvest uses repetition to teach self-reflection, asking the player to finish with more than a win state.
Publication Date
Fall 10-14-2025
Recommended Citation
Del Gesso, Christopher B., "Project Harvest" (2025). Game Design. 32.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/game_design/32
Date
14 October 2025