If you own any Keymaster game, you already know the drill. They make high production, mid-weight, easy to learn games that look as good as they play. The new edition of Harvest, first published back in 2017, is no exception. Trey Chambers’s farming game has been given a glorious touch up and is now a polished 1 to 4 player game where you’ll organise your farm, place workers and compete to become the top farmer in the fields.
Welcome to Furroughfield
To get started in Harvest, place the Town Board in the middle of the table. Each player picks their own farming board and collects three wheelbarrows. Shuffle the Farmer’s Market tiles and stack three on the Farmer’s Market space on the main board.
Next, set out the seed tiles, coins, and buildings near the Town Board. Deal four buildings into the workshop area; two in the 3-cost row and two in the 2-cost row. Shuffle the 10 Sunrise Tiles and place them face down.
For a 1 to 3 player game, place the ‘out to lunch’ sign over the small space in the Farmer’s Market. If you’re playing with four, shuffle the smaller Farmer’s Market tiles and stack three on this space. Place the round marker on the round track.
Players then add six building tiles face down on their farm and set their fertiliser and water droplet token to 1 on their designated spots. The water bucket is set to 3, and each player receives 1 wheat and 1 coin. Player tokens start at 0 on the score track. Finally, each player selects 2 characters and 2 farmhouse tiles, then chooses which to use, returning the rest to the box.
Each player draws a Sunrise Tile to determine who goes first. (This initial tile doesn’t provide benefits.) After that, Sunrise Tiles will decide turn order and award bonuses, but more on that later. For 1 or 2 player games, you’ll also use the simple automata, Gairy. Shuffle the cow tiles, and you’re ready to go.
There are a lot of moving parts in Harvest, but setup is surprisingly quick once you get the hang of it. It’s great to have the freedom to mix and match characters and farm tiles from the start, giving you the chance to pick the bonuses that best suit your playstyle. These choices will help shape your strategy as you compete for ribbons and aim to collect the most by the end of the game.
Time to Harvest
Harvest plays out across three phases: the Sunrise Phase, the Action Phase and the Sunset Phase. At the start of the game, players choose a Sunrise Tile to determine turn order. Then, three new Sunrise Tiles are revealed and players, in turn order, swap their current tile with one from the display. These tiles offer different combinations of resources like money, seeds and actions, and are numbered 1 to 10. The higher the number, the more generous the resources, but the later you’ll go in the turn. This choice sets you up for the round, so you’ll want to think carefully before grabbing the biggest reward.
Once everyone has selected a tile, players carry out their farmhouse and character actions. By the end of the Sunrise Phase, you should have a few resources in hand ready to tackle the round. You’ll keep hold of your Sunrise Tile until the next Sunrise Phase, where the swapping process repeats.
Then it’s onto the Action Phase. This is where most of the game happens. Players take turns placing wheelbarrows, which act as their workers, onto locations in town. Most locations only allow one worker, so once a space is taken, you’ll need to pivot and rework your plan. A few spots allow multiple workers, but these tend to offer smaller rewards. Going early in turn order gives you better access to these higher-value spaces.
Each location has three spots, numbered 1 to 3, which determine how many actions you can take there. So if you place a wheelbarrow on a 3 space, you’ll get three actions. On a 1 space, just the one. Some 1 spaces offer extra resources to balance things out, while the Fields’ 3-action spot comes with an added cost. You’ll need to pay coins based on the current round, which can get pricey fast. Where you go, and when, really matters.
There’s a variety of places to visit, each with its own purpose:
The General Store Buy fertiliser, water and seeds. Straightforward, but always a drain on your wallet.
The Fields This is where seeds get planted and crops grow. You can plant as many seeds as you have fertiliser for. Tending crops depends on your water supply and lets you either duplicate existing crops or add berries to your bushes. You can also harvest crops to earn money and ribbons. But be warned: when you harvest, you clear your entire field, so timing matters. Each unique crop sells for 1 coin, so variety pays off.
The Workshop A more expensive area, but essential. Here, you can clear building tiles from your farm, which are then flipped over and added to the building market. You can then buy any available building from this market, for a price of course, and add it to your farm. So make sure you have space. You can also upgrade your bucket here. This feels like a necessary evil. It’s costly, but without it, your water capacity stays painfully low and that bottlenecks your entire tending process. And trust me, you’ll want plenty of water for pumpkins, they’re the heavy hitters, scoring a massive 6 ribbons when harvested.
The Farmer’s Market Possibly the best spot on the board. You’ll find good deals here, with cheaper items and discounted field and workshop actions. The catch? Spaces are limited and go fast.
The Trading Post Honestly, the odd one out. It lets you trade resources, but most of the exchanges feel overpriced. Swapping three water to upgrade a seed and gain a coin doesn’t really feel worth it.
The Sunset Phase is simpler. Players remove their wheelbarrows from the board and discard the top Farmer’s Market tile from the game. Then, all Workshop buildings shift down one column, getting cheaper or sliding off the board entirely. After that, the next round begins. The game runs for four rounds total.
While the game offers lots of options, you won’t be able to do everything. It’s tight, and you’re constantly forced to rethink your strategy as other players block spaces and your resources dry up. Fertiliser, water and money are all hard-earned and easy to burn through. And despite the name, harvesting might only happen once or twice per game. It’s a long process to get a seed planted, watered and positioned to score well. Only harvest when it really counts, or you’ll waste turns and resources for minimal gain.
Best Farmer in the Fields
When the fourth Action Phase wraps up, the game ends and players count up their ribbons. Players will have already picked up points from harvests during the game, marking them on the Town Board tracker as they go. So while some players might look like they’re ahead, those end-game scoring conditions can easily swing the result.
First, players tally up their end-game buildings in any order they choose. These buildings each have their own scoring criteria, which might award bonus actions or points based on leftover resources like fertiliser.
Next, each player scores 1 point for every unharvested crop still on their player board. Note that blueberry bushes without blueberries don’t count here. They’re scored separately: each bush placed on your farm is worth 2 points, regardless of whether it’s produced fruit. A nice little points earner, so it’s always worth trying to plant at least a couple during the game.
After that, players score 1 point for every 2 coins left in their supply. Always the hardest points to come by in my experience, since farming in Furroughfield isn’t exactly a cheap endeavour.
If anyone passes the 49-point mark, they flip their farmhouse token to show they’ve crossed the 50-ribbon threshold. If you manage that on your first game, hats off. In the case of a tie,
the player with the most leftover resources (coins, seeds, water and fertiliser) wins. If still tied, the victory is shared.
Crop of Components
The production of this 60-minute game is fantastic. Granted, I’d love the blueberries to be more like those squishy ones from Everdell, but realistically that wouldn’t work with Harvest’s polyomino tile puzzle. The cardboard is thick and durable, the boards fold away neatly, and the wooden wheelbarrows, water droplets and mini poos (fertiliser) make this game a delightful treat to handle. Pair that with a beautiful box where no inch is left undecorated and those signature Keymaster flocked rulebooks, and the production is miles ahead of the original 2017 version.
What really stands out is the artwork by Tierra Connor. The colours are vibrant and make the board pop, while the anthropomorphic animals are bursting with personality. All of these components come together to create a charming atmosphere that invites you back to the table again and again.
That being said, the art can be a little misleading, as it doesn’t reflect how tricky and thinky the gameplay actually is. Also, the round tracker, while shaped like a lovely tractor, is far too big and tends to hog two numbers at once. It doesn’t ruin anything, but it does make it harder to follow the round count at a glance.
Seasonal Soloing
I enjoy Harvest with others, but I love it even more on my own. The solo mode takes you through a campaign using the Furroughfield almanac. You’ll face a series of challenges where you’ll play as specific characters, hit a minimum points threshold and meet certain objectives to be victorious and move on to the next stage.
Standing in your way is Mayor Gairy, who acts as your main opponent. He’ll snatch the tile you really wanted and sometimes take the first turn, adding just the right amount of tension. It becomes a tight race to the finish where you have to make every move count, all while not knowing exactly how Gairy will throw a spanner in the works. He also has far too many wheelbarrows, which is just plain annoying.
It took me more than a few tries to get through the first challenge successfully, and it felt so good when I finally racked up enough points. The sense of accomplishment in solo play is somehow even more satisfying than in multiplayer, probably because it feels like a struggle right from the start.
Each challenge comes with a bit of story to set the scene in Harvest’s world, which makes the experience more engaging and helps tie everything together thematically. Playing through the campaign also gives you the chance to try out each character and experiment with different strategies. This has definitely made my multiplayer games better, as I now feel like I understand the economic side of the game much more than I did before.
Harvest might not be to every player’s taste, but luckily it has a brilliant solo mode to keep you entertained.
Final Thoughts
Harvest is another jewel in the Keymaster crown. Its production value is astounding and it’s a treat for the eyes when laid out on the table. The theme is very cutesy and reminds me of Wind in the Willows with its anthropomorphic animals. But don’t let that fool you, the gameplay is a bit at odds with the design and isn’t as freeing as you might think. This is a limited-turn game where every round counts. With so much to do in Harvest you’ll want to try it all, but this isn’t that sort of game. You’ll finish with your board only partially cleared and you won’t be able to plant or build everything available. This might frustrate some players who, based on the art, expect Harvest to be all about kicking back and enjoying a farming sim. It’s not that at all.
Money is tight, and that scarcity adds real pressure. You often have to choose between buying seeds, building new constructions or upgrading your bucket, and it’s rare that you can afford to do all three. This can lead to a bit of analysis paralysis, especially when other players block the spaces you were relying on. It forces you to think on your feet and constantly adjust your strategy, which keeps the game feeling tense and dynamic.
Although Harvest is well balanced, the Town Board could make better use of certain spaces. After a few games, places like the Trading Post and the 3-fields action space seem redundant. Players tend to avoid them because they feel like a bad trade-off for the cost involved. With a bit of tweaking these areas could have been better balanced to encourage more variety in player decisions. That said, the character cards and farmhouse abilities feel well matched. Some combinations work better than others but that doesn’t always guarantee the win, which means the road to victory feels fair for everyone.
If you want a game that’s pleasing to look at, easy to set up and intuitive to play, Harvest offers an experience you can easily finish in under an hour. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and gives you a satisfying puzzle that’s stimulating, sometimes punishing and always engaging when playing solo. And if you ever feel like spending more time in Harvest, there’s no reason you can’t add a house rule to play five rounds instead of four. It’ll just make for a higher scoring game and smooth out some of the difficulty.
If you’re after charm with a side of challenge, Harvest serves it up perfectly.
About the author:
* Sophie is a gamer, blogger, podcaster, and book lover with a passion for solo narrative video games. When she’s not immersed in games or writing, she’s probably out hiking. Her favourite board games feature worker placement, nature themes, and smart tableau-building mechanics.
