This is exactly the kind of game I was looking for a long time. Harvest Island is a combination of a farming sim with a horror-mystery adventure. You play as Will and Samantha, a pair of siblings that live with their father on an island. Everyday they have to make offerings to the gods to receive their blessings. In order to do this you have to take care of the farm, tenmd to crops and animals, collect their produce and offer them at one of the many statues that are around the island.
The gods are however picky and each statue will have their own demands. As you bring offerings, the demands will increase over time, which means you have to expand the farm. Every offering you give will give you "bless" a mixture between a blessing and a currency. Bless can be exchanged for seeds and animals with the gods or you can spend it to craft various tools and upgrades that increase your efficency on the farm and allow you to produce more. As the demands of the gods grow, so does their generiosity, so you don't have to worry about running out of bless. You even get bless from just doing your daily chores like feeding animals or collecting crops.
You can also ask directly for a blessing from the gods. These act as permanent upgrades for your character, this can be something simple like befriending animals faster or getting more crops and can be even be somesthing amazing like redudcing the stamina cost of all tools to 1. Since these blessings last the entire game, it's advised to finish the requirements for them as fast as possible. Since the demands of gods change over time you are encouraged to explore more and more of the island to find new resources. This on the other hand will start the mystery plot of the game.
Very soon you will find out that there is something incredibly wrong with the island. You constantly find dead animals, god statues appear in places where they make no sense, you find several abandoned structures even though you are the only humans on the island. It is clear that something has happened in the past and the more you ask your dad, the more he will make excuses.
It is up to the player if he wants to dive deeper into the mystery and find out what is going on but you might not like what you will find. And between all the exploring you still have to do your daily tasks and satisfy the gods.

The game makes sure that solving the mystery and doing your farm work are both intertwined. In order to explore more of the island you will have to craft new tools but doing so requires more bless, so you have to satisfy the gods to get more. It's surprisingly well done and doesn't feel tacky at all. The farming mechanics are well done and are fun and after a long day of exploration it's nice to just chill and take care of the farm. It's a great contrast in which the horrors you will experience get soothed from the relaxing farm work.

A core mechanic of the game is cooking. Cooking is essential to progress because running takes stamina and even if you don't run, just progressing through your day will increase fatigue, which reduces max stamina until the next day. You can cook food to counter this, cooked food regains stamina and even reduces fatigue. Even better, the first time you eat a new dish you also get a permanent max stamina boost, so it's recommended to cook as many different dishes as possible. This is another nice mechanic to encourage exploration for more resources.

Another fun thing about the game is that it makes use of a tide mechanic. During low tide you can explore more of the beach and find crabss, seaweed and other stuff. It also opens up new regions for you to explore. High tide on the other side allows you to fish which is important to fulfill god offerings. And one thing I have to say that is positive is that the fishing minigame does not suck. I really hate fishing minigames in video games but this one is very nice, you just havbe to tap the directional keys in the right order.

Despite all the good points, there are several things I didn't like. For one, this game was done in RPG Maker. Everyone who has played RPGM games knows that the engine is... not very good. It's easy to use but VERY restricted which you can feel here too even though the game has expanded far beyond the usal RPGM mechanics. The performance is also not the best, be ready for stuttering especially if you open or close the menu or worse, when it rains.
But these are restrictions from an engine perspective, there are however some game elements that are bad too.
For one, the game LOVES jumpscares. A little too much. These can appear at random moments and even in situations that have nothing to do with the plot. For example sometimes wild animals will jump out of the forest or a tree might fall down with a loud noise. The first few times it was okay to keep the atmosphere tense but eventually it got annoying because it happened on every corner. And the game does not even need those, there are enough scary moments that kept me on my toes like suddenly finding a dead animal.

There are also some minor annoyances like the game not having a clock so you don't know the exact game time but these were never too bad like the stuff I mentioned before.

Still, I constantly wanted to keep playing because the game is so much fun. Just the farming aspect is nice on its own but solving the mystery is what really drives the player to put more time into it and I don't regret that. And despite how I make it sound, the game is overall very chill, you never feel pressured to fulfill the demands of the gods, you can take your time to finish your tasks even if it takes more than one day. This a is a huge plus for me.
So for everyone who wants a farming game that's a bit different, I cannot recommend this game enough.

I bought this without reading anything. I think that made it WAY better because I legit had NO idea what was about to happen. Short but good.

Skip to story mode, normal doesnt really offer anything other than spending more time gathering resources you ultimately dont need.