Harvest Moon: Mad Dash Reviews

Fun game :)

great game to pass the time

Mad Dash plays like a top-tier puzzle game while staying impressively true to the emotional appeal of the Harvest Moon series. In other words, while the levels become increasingly complex as you progress, the smoothness of this progression keeps the overall experience quite relaxing and enjoyable. Ultimately, it's a really fun title, and I highly recommend it!

The game really just isn't fun, and for the price they are asking for, it's way too much. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mg-XV36loH4&t=

Fun coop puzzle game, but i like frantic farming more because have story mode with a lot of character that you can use

At the time of this review, I've played just 20 minutes, but that's probably enough to get a good idea of what to expect. The gameplay itself doesn't change much from what I've seen on YouTube. Technical details: Not much to speak of. Unsurprisingly runs fine at 1440p/144fps on my PC. Only graphics setting is a low/medium/high detail toggle, which doesn't really seem to do much of anything. I would STRONGLY recommend you play this game with controller(s). The default keyboard setup for Player 1 is WASD and the keys immediately around them for the action buttons (Q,E,F,C for instance). It feels way too cramped. They did this because you can have two players on the keyboard, with Player 2 using the arrow keys and right side of the keyboard. While you can remap the keys to your liking, it appears that the menus still use default keys for navigation regardless, so it's probably best to use a controller or two if you plan to play this game. The game also doesn't appear to have any menu option to actually quit the game. Only way to get out is to Alt-F4 it seems. Gameplay: Pretty straightforward. You pick up bunches of crops/fish/whatever blocks and put them next to the same type of blocks. Do this twice and you can harvest them for points. You can rotate the blocks, and if you get the blocks into a 2x2 square or bigger, they transform into a larger block that can be harvested for more points. Although you can keep putting like blocks together to get larger blocks (and therefore more points from harvesting), the crops will wither (rather quickly I might add) if you wait too long and then you'll "harvest" for no points. Harvesting fills up a power gauge, which, when full, causes all the blocks to be immediately harvestable for a short time. Other mechanics include obstacles such as rocks that block you from moving and orders that show up on the bottom of the screen for various crops. Harvest those crops to get bonus points. Make it to certain score thresholds to get one, two, or three stars for a particular stage. You'll need to get a decent (though not terribly many) stars to advance beyond certain stages. Judgment: It's not a bad little game to be honest. It can be fun with other players (as was the case when I played with a friend on Switch) and is a decent time waster solo. The problem is the cost. For me, my region of HK meant that I paid the equivalent of about $16-17, but the game costs $30/30euro in US/EU respectively. If you can muster four people to play this game, then maybe the cost isn't too bad, but I really think the price is too much for what's on offer (there are roughly 100 stages in the game IIRC). As much as I hate the whole concept of F2P, this game really seems like it'd be more suitable as a free game with microtransactions. You can probably see from the screenshots that the game has a stage+star system that's similar to many mobile games, and it even includes boosters that you can activate before each level to make the stages easier, although I haven't so far found them to be necessary because the game is not remotely difficult. In conclusion, I'd not recommend this game for $30. For the price I paid, it's "ok" or at least, acceptable. If this game was more like $10 or less, I'd probably say that it's worth trying, but as is, there are PLENTY of solo experiences out there that are more worth it for $30, and for co-op, I'd probably recommend something like the cheaper Overcooked series before trying this.