‘The Harvest’ review: free-to-play Web3 AAA game — GAM3 Awards WINNER!

Voted ‘Games Choice’ at the first ever GAM3 Awards 2022, ‘The Harvest’ is a multiplayer online battle arena (MOBA). It’s a 3rd person shooter Web3 NFT game built on the decentralized blockchain platform, Solana. 

Right now, The Harvest game is on pre-alpha release with 30,000 players.

This in-depth review will capture the team behind the game, the gameplay, NFTs, tokenomics and an overall personal experience of the game and community.

Preface

The Harvest is one of the fastest rising Web3 games at the moment. Soon to launch on Steam, it’s a feast for the eyes with gorgeous graphics and fluid motion; it is fast-paced and action-filled to keep you on the edge of your seat (or bean bag).

Free-to-play, so anyone can play ‘The Harvest’. Joining their Discord community fast-tracks your access to the pre-alpha release. The gameplay looks like that of the global phenomena – Fortnite, but with more Sci-Fi and futuristic elements. 

We managed to get on the waitlist for the pre-alpha release to give you this game review.

The Team

Many experienced game developers and finance experts came together to build the game. The host studio, Falco Studios also has the game Mouse Hunt. Keep it locked on buidlbee for an exclusive game review of the Mouse Hunt game, coming soon.

In an interview published by BNB Chain, an unnamed team member from Falco Studios narrates their journey;

Ferran, Ivan, Raul and Jordi (The Breach Studio execs) have known each other since 2005, by chatting at game development forums back in the day. In 2010, Ferran and Ivan started their own company, Kerad Games, along with Gerard Piqué (FC Barcelona professional football player), shipping 4 games with more than 50M downloads and 6 years in liveops. Jordi joined them early in 2018.

After 15 years of experience creating games for top studios like Ubisoft, King, GameLoft, Konami, passionate game creators came together and started The Breach Studio in late 2018.

Regarding the blockchain expertise and strategy, we would like to highlight that The Breach Studios met Caio Jahara, Andres Bilbao and Antonio Viggiano around the time the pandemic started. This trio had already worked with big blockchain projects (Mouse Haunt and Invert) for some time, understanding how to scale marketing, technology and operations in a Web 3.0 company.

These two groups discussed the possibility of partnering up to build a world class crypto game. Finally around six months back they decided to finally go for it. Additionally, Luiz Piccini (CEO) and Alessandro Rosa (CMO) both joined the company as ex-Wildlife Studios employees, having worked with mobile games for years.

‘The Harvest’ — The Storyline

As a player in ‘The Harvest’ game, you are a hero. After arriving at the planet O’Ree-Jin in a spaceship, you and your squad of other heroes, randomly start in one of four different bases set up at every corner of the map. 

You are the chosen ones, to traverse and discover what secrets lie in O’Ree-Jin. Your mission is to harvest as much essence as you and your squad can. Every game is 10 minutes and fast-paced. Blink and you’re eliminated. The squad with more essence harvested after each level, emerges victorious.  When the game starts, the hero you select will appear at its base together with two other squadmates.

Each hero and the planet each have an origin story. Check them out in ‘The Harvest’ whitepaper.

O’Ree-Jin is a planet rich in the Essence of Life. This is a desirable resource and what you need to get and maintain throughout the gameplay. More essence is better. Four surrounding planets around O’Ree-Jin all with unique civilizations compete in squads of three, in epic showdowns for the most essence within the 10 minute timeframe.

‘The Harvest’ — Gameplay

As soon as the timer starts, heroes dash out and venture the planet to collect essence. In order to collect more essence, here are the game dynamics to keep in mind:

• Harvest the Essence of the planet to reach the main goal of the squads.
• Use the cards that will be attached to the heroes during the game to enhance their attributes or abilities, or even adding to them new powerful effects.
• Respawn allies that have recently died to avoid them going back to their bases.
• Teleport to your base when an enemy squad is stealing the essence at your base.
• Use portals that will allow you to immediately teleport to the center of the map.

Each hero has ability cards, which are NFTs — collectible and tradeable across NFT marketplaces. Ability cards range from buffing your weapon damage, to being able to see enemies through walls and surfaces obstructing your view. Premise of most shooter games. 

Another major gameplay component is Companion Cards. Think of it as a robot companion that fights at your side and possesses special abilities. This can range from executing certain enemies or reviving a squadmate. They are extensions of your hero and work to aid your gameplay. All cards are selected when you select your hero.

‘The Harvest’ Heroes

• Alith: With dual shotguns. Steals health from her enemies as she damages them. My personal favorite. Dashes at high speed.
• Duke: Has a rocket launcher that can cause damage over a large area — very explosive. Equipped with a jetpack. 
• Kira: Has a submachine gun and healing properties. She can also prevent other heroes from using their special abilities.
• Sahad: The coolest looking sniper I have seen so far. Precise with his sniper, also has Sub Zero ‘get over here’ abilities. 
• Braku (coming soon)

Heroes upgrade at each level of gameplay. The heroes skins and in-game cosmetic art are also collectible NFTs.

We noticed a few glitches here and there, but nothing worth huffing and puffing about. The team at Falco is constantly making changes and updating the community on Discord.

The Map

It goes without saying that the map would be symmetrical. The landscapes and distribution of elements, as well as the harvesting of Essence are affected by the map. It’s all planned out – nothing is random. Every hero arrives on the planet on a spaceship, and the squads are formed in the various bases on the planet.

Call your gaming buddies to meet up at a base to form a squad and play the game together, or against each other for an epic adventure.

The bases serve as warehouses for each squad. All the collected Essence is stored here and displayed publicly in the ranking. Various portals are distributed all over the map so you can jump right to the center of the map. 

Apart from collecting Essence, you will also battle monsters that pop up across the map, from extractors and from stealing other squads resources. These three methods give you more Essence than simply collecting those distributed across the map. Every extractor is guarded by some non-player characters (NPCs) which are quite easy to defeat. 

NPCs also guard your base to try and prevent an enemy squad from stealing your essence. 

The Harvest — Tokenomics

The game isn’t out yet and the Essence of Life token or EOL token is a secondary utility token that you earn when completing quests, winning matches and basically while playing the game.

You can then use $EOL to upgrade your NFTs. 

Something worth noting about the EOL token is that it has a limited supply, which is mostly unheard of in NFT games. Keeping our eyes and ears on the Harvest developers to see what plans they have for the token, and how they will manage it. 

 

The second token is the $HAR (HARvest) token, the main cryptocurrency and the governance token of the game. You can get this by leveling up in the game and getting rewards. Complete daily quests and win squad matches against enemies to earn HAR tokens. Use the HAR tokens to buy NFTs and governance in ‘The Harvest’ platform once the game is officially launched. 

HAR cryptocurrency is available on the market. The most unique and exclusive NFTs of the game can also only be purchased with $HAR. How the tokens can be used requires some patience to understand the diagram below, picked from the official whitepaper of ‘The Harvest’ game. This complex illustration shows how you can acquire the utilities and NFTs in the game. Grab a pen and paper, or print it out and hang it on your wall. 

The good news is that they’re many uses for both $EOL and $HAR within the game. Extensive use of the utilities means more demand for the tokens.

Some concerns

Essence of Life $EOL is available to ALL players. Afterall, you run around the map collecting, stealing and earning essence. So there is actually a limit to how much essence a player can collect in the game daily. $EOL collected will be burned dynamically.

Excited for the public open beta in Q1 2023, and despite ‘The Harvest’ being a very sophisticated AAA game, it will feature a PVE option. However, with the game’s rising popularity, I think they’ll always be players online to be able to battle and form squads with.

There’s minimal information about the land, but it should function like other Web3 games where you harvest resources and get a passive income — $EOL or $HAR.

Our predictions are that there will be slots for players to build infrastructure and mine $EOL or $HAR or even extract NFTs from the monsters. The roadmap mentions the expansion into a metaverse scenario, so this could be the case. Only time will tell.

How can I make money on this?

NFTs — The ability and power cards are attractive NFTs, but the hero NFTs are on another level. 

‘The Harvest’ launched their first NFT sale on July 7th, 2022. You can now trade the cards won in gameplay on the NFT Marketplace.

Soulbound Tokens — ‘The Harvest’ becomes one of the first GameFi projects to use Binance Account Bound (BAB) tokens. These are Soulbound Tokens created by Binance and issued on the BNB Smart Chain. Soulbound tokens are a representation of their holder’s credentials, and as suggested by their name, are non-transferable, non-financialized, and unique assets.

Unlike other cryptocurrencies that can be transferred across wallets, these tokens are permanently bound to the account or wallet where they reside.

As part of The Harvest’s blockchain layer, players who use BAB tokens gain an exclusive Discord role called ‘Soulbound Explorers’, which gives them access to exclusive events and giveaways, including a unique skin and battletag.

Timeline

1. Exclusive Discord Role: Launched September 2022.
2. BAB Exclusive Soulbound Hero Skin: November 2022.
3. BAB Exclusive Soulbound Battletag: TBA.
4. Other Soulbound Token Case Usage: TBA.

If interested in minting BNB, learn how to here.

BONUS: For a limited time, Dec 20th, 2022 — Jan 2nd, 2023, ‘The Harvest’ has partnered with Wasder, for an airdrop for 295 lucky winners! Additionally, players stand to win amazing prizes worth $60k.🎅

Parting shot

‘The Harvest’ caught my attention after they took home the Game’s Choice of the Year award at the first ever GAM3 Awards 2022. The award recognizes a web3 game as voted by game developers and creators from various studios worldwide, with the exception of voting from their own game(s). 

This is one of the leading reasons that ‘The Harvest’ is a brilliant game approved by players and developers outside the Falco circle.

Worthy of the crown it bears, ‘The Harvest’ promises to pioneer among other AAA games like Illuvium. 

Join other Harvest players and fans on their Discord, currently with over 29,000 members or follow them on Twitter where they have over 35,000 followers. 

🐝Buidlbee Gamer Bee Ranking: 8/10

The ranking is determined by the graphics, gameplay and game community built, plus the overall gaming experience. Web3 games are not compared to non-blockchain games. The tokenomics do not play a part in the ranking of the game.