I've always loved full-motion video (FMV) games, which were at the peak of their popularity in the 1990s and early 2000s. Of the dozens of FMV games I've point-and-clicked my way through, one in particular holds the trophy for the weirdest and wildest: Harvester, a bizarre, extremely violent 1996 point-and-click horror title. And through the magic of preservation on Steam and GoG, it's still a trip you can experience today.

Harvester's general premise is perhaps best explained by the error-laden, punctuationless description on the back of its box: "You wake up one morning to a town full of strangers and inexplicable sights. You share your home with your not so perfect [sic] family and your supposed fiancee [sic] lives next door. Then you are plunged into a nightmare! Your fiancee [sic] is missing and you find a hideous bloody skull and spinal chord [sic] draped across her bed! Is it hers? What is going on?"

What is going on, indeed? In Harvester, nothing is as it seems. The player-character, Steve, wakes up in what is apparently his hometown, Harvest. Harvest is very clearly inspired by Twin Peaks, complete with a 1950s-style diner, a mysterious (and possibly paranormal) lodge, and some seriously weird inhabitants. But poor Steve has mysteriously been struck down by amnesia, and doesn't recognize the town itself, nor anything in it — including his own family. At first, things seem somewhat normal, but the gross-outs start early. If, after waking up in Steve's bedroom, you go explore the attached bathroom, the game's flavor text will inform you that the sink is covered in pubic hair, and the nearby wastebasket is full of tissues that are stuck to the side of the bin. Gross, but not........

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