• Price: $7.99
• Publisher: aPriori Digital
• Release Date: February 10, 2022

A review code was kindly provided by aPriori Digital. We thank them for being able to cover this game.

I love photography – especially when the pictures involve animals. I’ve probably got about 30,000 pictures of my pets alone. 😅 I appreciate photography as an art form because I love the way everyone can admire and interpret the images, and I also love being able to look at pictures and remember cherished memories.

I was intrigued by the idea of Cellular Harvest, where you photograph and document alien life forms in order to determine their value to corporate interests.

When I started the game, it took me several times to actually start it because the controls did not seem to work properly when I tried to confirm that I wanted to started the game. I had to start and exit multiple times before I managed to start the game. Only after completing the game and attempting to test it again did I realize that they outlined the option you would select in a darker blue. I didn’t notice it because I was focused on the words for the option I wanted to choose, and I guess it was harder for me to notice the (barely) different colored outlines.

The intro provides a very brief, basic description of the game, and the text seemed a bit too small for my tastes. (The font was also somewhat difficult to make out.) I started walking around and taking pictures, and the game would tell me the name of the photographed alien life form and what exactly it was. I think there might have been a missed opportunity for us to perhaps collect specimens as well.

There’s no character development or plot really, and the graphics are not my favorite, with many drab colors. But that’s just my personal taste in graphics. Water did not seem to have much texture or movement. Some of the flowers were pretty though. It’s also a shame that a game about cataloging alien specimens did not seem to have any emphasis on photographing the plant life.

On one hand, I was happy not to deal with any of the creatures attacking me. But on the other hand, it might have served to break up some of the monotony. Initially, I didn’t realize I was supposed to take pictures of every individual creature, as I was under the impression that I shouldn’t take duplicate images. But the photo album database gives you information on the amount of each creature that you need to document. The objective of the game is to document at least 75% of the alien life forms. It was a little disappointing that there were so many of the same creatures that you need to photograph, as there wasn’t really much variety.

Some of the pictures seemed a bit glitchy, showing parts of the environment around me instead of what should have been in the picture. It was also disappointing that the pictures you take do not go in the database for you to look at later; they pop up on the screen when you take them and then disappear. When you click on the creature in the database, there’s just an odd lined blue screen behind the creature’s “stock image.”

I did manage to reach the 75% mark for documentation, and completed the “green”/daytime part of the game in about 30 minutes. Although the game is short, they still allow you to quit the game and continue as needed, which I appreciate. As you get to the end and start returning to your ship, the screen starts going a bit wonky, which was a bit off-putting. They at least attempted to make the very brief “ending” interesting, but overall it felt like the game just needed something more.

Switch it ON or Switch it OFF? I wish that the gameplay had been a little more engaging. There could have been a larger variety of creatures, improved menus and text, and more information on the “corporate interests” in the summary. The game is called Cellular Harvest, but you don’t do any harvesting, only documenting, and the photos don’t appear in the “database.” I like the concept a lot, but I would have liked a more expansive experience here. 5/10