Review: Edna & Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes – PS4

Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes delivers a classic point-and-click adventure with some zany characters and a truckload of weirdness. The writing and voice acting can be hit or miss, but fans of adventure games will appreciate it.
Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes is a sequel to Edna & Harvey: The Breakout. Although it may not be 100% required to enjoy this game, there are details in the world and backstory that you won’t entirely appreciate with it. The story focuses on Lilli, a nice girl in a strict, religious convent school. She is a good girl who is surrounded by some unkind people. The mother superior screams at her and makes her do chores, and some of her fellow students are mean.

The first hour of the game sets the stage, but it’s a little bland. Don’t worry. It takes off after that, and keeps up a much better pace. You’ll interact with other characters and collect items to solve puzzles. There were times I was just trying everything in my inventory to see what worked, but many of them are more straightforward if you examine your environment and items thoroughly. The levels are also well-designed to eliminate longer distances when moving back and forth.
The usual gameplay is sometimes interrupted with minigames, and I found these to be generally creative and fun. They are puzzles to solve by matching symbols or playing a game of chess. There were only a few scattered throughout the game, but it was nice to see.
The story will take you from the convent school, a town, and other places less grounded in reality. It can be really out there in a good way, but don’t look for too much sense at times. I don’t want to spoil anything, but there’s a lot of imagination in here. There’s also a really dark sense of humor that I liked. Everything seems very sweet until you hear the narrator tell you that Lilli wouldn’t want someone to fall and break all their bones or someone dies in a horrible “accident”.
There are moments that pop out at you like this, but I thought the writing itself ranged from good to just OK. Some of the characters were very creative, and I really wanted others to just finish talking to let me make another selection. There is enough of the good here to push the balance to the positive, but I wanted a little more.

The drawn art style is very nice and has a cartoony feel. It’s colorful, sweet, and contrasts nicely when there is death scene. The animations can be sparse, but, for this type of game, it was fine. It was also clear enough to tell when there was something you could pick up or interact with in the world. Music and sound were also sparse, but good. The overall presentation feels like a love letter to older point-and-click games, and they did a great job here.
The voiceovers were another place that had hit and miss. In a game with character, some of them just lacked punch. Once again, it was limited, but there were some strong and weak performances.
Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes is a good adventure game with a very unconventional story to tell. It’s imaginative and weird story and crazy characters brighten up a classic point-and-click adventure with a dark sense of humor. The writing and jokes can be uneven and the voice acting could be better, but this is a game that will reward fans of the genre a fun tale through a (potentially crazy) good girl’s mind.

Edna & Harvey: Harvey's New Eyes PS4 Review

• 6/10
  Overall - Good - 6/10

6/10

Summary

Edna & Harvey: Harvey’s New Eyes is a point-and-click game that follows Lilli through a wacky adventure in her world and her mind. The writing and voice acting can be uneven at times, but fans of the previous adventure and of the genre will enjoy this unique and funny tale.