Harmonium

EDIT: 8/8/18 My only (significant) issue w/Harmonium is that the developers have been 100% AWOL on discussions, which is NO SMALL THING. Thank you. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Harmonium is that most UNexpected of games: a cute apocalyptic tale! A cataclysm without death (and little bloodshed), and a quest at the (possible) end of humanity….not a quest for death, destruction and domination, but rather to be a bard that can lead others on a quest to find someone, establishing peace and brotherhood along the way. And how is this quest accomplished? Through what is essentially a “choose your own adventure” story on steroids. Since it’s likely that interested gamers may be even more familiar with this genre than is this reviewer, the focus will be on what Harmonium offers that makes it special. First and foremost, there will NEVER be two identical games (unless perhaps that is the carefully documented intention, but that would be a waste of time far better spent having fun!) This reviewer played one failed game and two interrupted games before finally obtaining success, partially in order to examine the mechanics of Harmonium. And what was discovered is that similar (but not identical) responses to situations can deliver quite different results (and even varying DEGREES of such results), and therefore the possibility of a vastly different story from that point on. Not only are minor points and character choices different, but the entire direction of the tale can vary to a great extreme. Characters, situations and locations were encountered in the fourth game that had been unknown to that point. (And yes, a very high degree of replayability, indeed! Perhaps as high as any game this reviewer has played.) The character finds him/herself waking in a (yet) unknown village sometime after the world is overtaken by a somewhat vague cataclysm (the best kind!) After being taken in by the local Bard and found to be a suitable replacement, the original bard suddenly leaves the village. The new “player bard” is left behind to both become a leader, and to discover the path of the absent bard through a wild and untamed countryside filled with creatures, people, and deliberately isolated towns that must all be won over in stages. And in 110 weeks (or steps), all necessary quests must be successfully completed (regardless of the “quest mix” generated by circumstances and choices.) What sets Harmonium apart is the absence of any but the slightest implied violence, despite many situations involving the possibility of violence. Each player has decisions to choose (yes, the decisions themselves must be chosen), decisions to make based on those choices, and possibilities for how to best utilize those friends, villagers and acquaintances encountered along the way. Numerous game “mixes” are determined by clearly expressed choices made in the upkeep of the Guildhouse. One choice will allow additional active friends, another might involve better odds for quest success, yet another is for more successful social interactions, etc. (Nothing really new here.) But what it new is the cleverness of the story which develops along the way, and the various personalities and human interactions that add life to the village, and meaning to each story (as each playthrough is essentially a new story to be told as the player chooses, or is chosen for them as the concequences of their own choices and actions.) Harmonium may not change the gaming world, but it’s a very refreshing game that can be played to completion as quickly (perhaps an hour is enough) or as slowly and carefully as one may want, saving and returning as desired. The dozen achievements included add tremendously to replayability, as these are certainly NOT “participation trophies” as is SO common. Some are simple enough, but most need to be attacked with singular purpose to be obtained in one playthrough (and perhaps not even then!) While Harmonium isn’t perfect (with the same sort of grammatical improprieties so common in games made for an international market. And one specific decision acknowledgement that can cause players to never realize the details behind the results of decisions made. See discussion forum.) Yet Harmonium is solid, imaginative and fun. While the price may be a dollar or two higher than expected from a game with such (in one opinion) pedestrian graphics, that too isn’t uncommon in “small shop” games, and games with this high degree of replayability that have need for a large pool of graphics to draw from. In essence, Harmonium is just about EXACTLY what so many of us long-time gamers have come to hope for from indie gamers that are giving so much of themselves in order to provide life to today’s complex and diverse gaming world. Thank you.

Harmonium is a nice story driven game where your choices will help you build your community and build relationships. If you enjoyed Tavernier you will probably enjoy Harmonium. Check out this video of the first 10 minutes of the game: https://youtu.be/HRLHyVhDtj4

Harmonium is a cute little game. It's nothing too fancy, but it was still quite enjoyable. However, I do not now about replayability yet. This review was written after my first playthrough. You are a lost soul that gets picked up by 'the Bard' of Harmonium Point and the way these type of games always go, said Bard soon leaves your side and announces you their heir. With the new title of Bard, you are now supposed to take over the Guildhouse and basically turn into something akin to a mayor to Harmonium Point, handling different tasks and moving out to befriend neighbouring villages. You can get to know your villagers through events, earn their trust to learn about their backstories and gather them in your backyard to improve their stats that will help you during all kinds of different events, either random, for the village or befriending your neighbours. To further push your abilities, you can repair and restore the Guildhouse, upgrade it, to either earn bonuses or raise your upkeep to push said bonuses even further. While the different events are nicely written, there are still a lot of mistakes hidden in them (either being grammatical errors, random gender mistakes or characters turning into generic-elfblabla). The graphics are a bit meh, reminding me of Habbo Hotel and the character's images not always go along with the discriptions given by the text ( the bard for example being described as an old man with beard, when his image looks like a young man with a cleanly shaven face and..blind?). A thing, that I found a bit sad is that once you fullfilled your maingoal (finding the bard's whereabouts), the game ends. You are unable to further work on the guildhouse or maybe have some cute after-main-story events with the characters of your village and those new friends you made in the other villages. Aside from that you don't actually build any proper relationships with the characters surrounding you, which sometimes makes you feel like the game lacks some depth, since your character is not really given any proper personality either, so you feel like a ghost floating around town, chiming in with different events whenever needed. The music of the game can be pretty annoying at times too, since whenever you visit another village you are being stuck with that music until you cue another event that includes a new music track. Therefor the game is a nice little experience, but lacks the trait of captureing the player enough to maybe give this game a few more tries to do things differently than just doing only one playthrough of it. I do recommend it for a boring afternoon, however if you're looking for a game that entertains you a bit longer than that, you should probably look elsewhere..

This game has nowherre near the charm or coolness of Tavernier. Anoying, cloying music and cruddy, childish graphics... it was cheap to buy... and I still regret the money! Could have spent the time looking at the back of my hand or something more fufilling. Botton line: Don't Buy!

Alright, I'll go ahead and give this one a positive - IF it sounds interesting to you. If you don't like a lot of reading, choose-your-own adventure style, you'll become bored. That is the meat of this game is the great writing. You must choose from a list of events to initiate to progress to the next week and they're all a few paragraphs of what your character is doing. You pick one of those choices, a few paragraphs of the result of your choice play out based on your stats, and then you receive rewards but mostly it's to progress the week because you put characters in your house to passively generate resources. Resources are what is used to upgrade your furniture and sometimes spent on events. The game is pretty straight-forward about what does what and how to progress the story. There's not a lot of things you have to keep in mind. There is a finite number of weeks before you must complete the game. Full disclosure, I have not done so yet, however the time limit does not seem too short that you'll feel the need to hustle. It's okay to fail events occasionally. It's sort of like Princess Maker almost except it's lacking in the actual gameplay and ability to progress your character's stats. There is no combat. You will only be seeing the inside of your house (pretty good art though) - exploration and interaction with NPCs is done through text. I've mentioned this earlier but the writing is *great*. It's what's kept me going. So for $4.99 I think I got my money's worth but definitely keep this in your wishlist and buy it on sale if you've gotten this far in my review. To the devs, something that would've really gotten me more invested in this game is more party interaction. There's a little and that's how you unlock characters' bios but it's mostly random and there's one event that means nothing in the end except two pages of their biographies I frankly don't care to read because the characters mean nothing to me other than passive resource machines. I didn't find the bios as intriguing as the main game story. Anyway, I'll be keeping an eye out on what the dev does next and recommending this so hopefully their next game will be an improvement.

A cute, post-apocalyptic game. Mostly text-based but with a pleasant story-book design. But wait a minute – should cute and post-apocalyptic go together? It works like a children's cautionary tale: it won’t give you nightmares but may touch your ideas about the future. I enjoyed the story. There is a steady progression to the main character and plot with freedom to 'explore'; but you'll need to bring some imagination as much of exploration is done through text narration. The game makes a good distraction for an evening or two. And after you’ve finished all your quests and character development, you can choose to think about how it compares to our own world – or not. I think it’s funny how, for some of us, no matter what dystopian future we can imagine for ourselves, somewhere there it still has to have elves in it.