Harvester A 1950s town with a bloody secret

You wake up with amnesia in Harvest, Texas, in the 1950s. Your "family" acts like you have always lived there, a fiancée named Stephanie lives next door, and nobody finds any of this strange. Then her bed turns up draped in a bloody skull and spinal cord, and the only clue is an invitation to the Order of the Harvest Moon, the organization that quietly runs the town.

From there you explore Harvest, talk to its residents and piece together what is happening. The town plays everything straight: cheerful small-town faces, creepy voice acting and a story that keeps sliding from wholesome into nightmare. The ending explains why the world feels so wrong, and it is the kind of payoff people remember years later.

Harvester was billed as the most violent adventure game of all time, and it leans into that with over-the-top gore scenes, monsters and deaths played for shock and for laughs at once. The dark humor is the point: the game is a satire, stuffed with absurd characters and situations that are funny and disturbing in the same breath.

It also hands you a startling amount of freedom. Nearly every resident of the town can be attacked and killed, though witnesses tend to end your run quickly. Combat exists too, and it can be visceral, but it is clumsy by modern standards and healing items are scarce, so expect to lose fights and reload. Save often and in several slots: some puzzles can leave you stuck with no way back.