Previous Next

Here is one of those rare non-violent games, based on strategy rather than zapping the enemy. It also separates the boys from the girls, or so I found among the kids I let loose on it. The girls loved it, but the boys thought it was 'rubbish', probably because it is intriguing rather than exciting, depending on thinking ahead rather than on fast hand-to-eye coordination.

Up to four can play, each driving a harvester which gobbles up dots scattered around the screen.

The round ends when a player cannot move in any direction containing dots to be gobbled.

When the game is RUN, the screen fills up with coloured dots - otherwise known as parcels of Boosterpiece.

The distinctive harvesters for each player are placed randomly around the screen. At screen right are the simple direction codes: 1 for up, 5 for down, 8 for north east, and so on.

You make a move by typing in your personal code (A-D) and the direction of your choice; an infinite time is allowed for you to make up your mind in a move. You can use the DELETE key to change your mind before hitting RETURN to make the move.

The harvester then trundles off gobbling the dots in your chosen direction as far as it can go, to a pleasing musical accompaniment. It stops when it hits the edge of the screen, meets another harvester, or runs out of dots.

An attempt to move in a direction which is thus barred, without even one dot to be gobbled, ends the round and reduces the player's score to zero. Other players' scores are carried over to the next round.

The strategy, of course, consists of trying to munch a line of dots in such a way that your opponent is isolated in as small an area as possible, so that it's not you who has to abort the round and lose all your points.

The graphics are simple but effective, including a rather powerful (but increasingly irritating) screen flash routine in the second half if you fail. The sound effects work pretty well too.

But Harvester's biggest point of appeal is the fact that it is a game that appeals to the intellect rather than to a sublimated desire to zap other entities.