Project Harvest
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Start Date
23-4-2026 12:00 AM
Description
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.” 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.
Recommended Citation
Del Gesso, Christopher, "Project Harvest" (2026). 2026 Student Academic Showcase. 22.
https://digitalcommons.lindenwood.edu/src_2026/oral_presentation/1/22
Project Harvest
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.” 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.