Trials of Harmony ~ A Found Phone Mystery Visual Novel

The idea of a death game all set within the confines of a smartphone interface is a neat idea, but that means other aspects, such as the music, atmosphere, and text has to make up for what little visual elements than is normally presented in the typical visual novel. And I think this VN does a good job bringing it to the table. For the most part, the text really holds up — my minor complaints would be some character inconsistencies (for example, one character is described to have a husband and is addressed as "Mrs." early on, but later in the game she is addressed as "Miss") and spelling issues, although since the game IS set within a smartphone, you could make the excuse that the characters are bound to misspell or maybe the in-game phone selects words from an auto-correct function that don't fit the situation. For a VN that lacks character portraits (save avatars) and being so heavily reliant on text to bring all the major characters to life, it does a good job overall to inform you on what makes each character tick, such as Tracy's creative use of emoticons expressing her feelings at any given moment, or James's high self-esteem on his acting career involving what sounds like cheesy B-movies. The soundtrack and sound design is where the game shines. The soundtrack seems to always fit the atmosphere perfectly — whether if it's relaxed, upbeat music when it's just the characters chatting amongst themselves at the start of a new day, or tense, agitated music when dealing with the psychotically-minded Game Master in charge of the death games, the audio experience never feels out of step. The game suggests playing with headphones, and I'm inclined to agree. The puzzles are straightforward and fairly easy to suss once you've figured the logic behind them. For a death game that emphasizes on characters getting the right answer or solution lest they die, the game itself is surprisingly generous, even giving you a second chance to consult with the other characters on solving a puzzle. (I believe the one exception is the first death game session, which is a "21 questions"-type game fleshing out the main character.) Although the VN markets "meaningful choices that directly affect the progression of the narrative" as one of its features, I feel this is somewhat misleading. Your choices don't have much effect or influence until the last chapter of the game, as it's only within the last chapter that what you pick determines which ending you get, making [i]Trials of Harmony[/i] closer to that of a kinetic novel. Despite the kinetic nature of the first six chapters and only in the last chapter being given real choices, I genuinely believe the VN warrants at least two full playthroughs to fully understand what's going on. Why do I recommend playing fully playing the game twice even though your choices don't even matter until the last chapter? There are two instances in the VN where you ARE given a choice whether to trust or not trust certain characters but the game forces you to trust them anyhow. By replaying the VN knowing what's going to happen, an in-game reason why you are railroaded into trusting them emerges: [spoiler]the drug all the characters have been ingesting during the whole time, codenamed Harmony, is intended to foster trust between people. As such, you [i]can't[/i] not trust the other characters who are stuck in the same situation as you[/spoiler]. This is where the replay bonus is what makes this VN shine. The replay bonus also brings up implications for [spoiler]Harmony possibly not working as intended or enhancing possible negative traits with certain people, like Lillian[/spoiler]. If you're willing to put in the time to fully grasp the nuance of the story for at least two playthroughs, give this VN a shot.

(spoiler free review) It's a standard closed circle mystery visual novel in the vein of danganronpa or root double. It is well written and there are some cool characters and twists that had me popping off. So far I've gotten only one ending but I'm going to try to get the true ending at least. A big question you might have about this is how well it uses its central gimmick that the whole thing takes place through a phone. I'd say that it uses this gimmick very well to increase immersion (really feels like a phone) as well as for certain plot elements. In fact, it uses the gimmick so well that I'd recommend buying the phone version of this game instead of the PC version tbh. My only complaint about this game is the fact that a lot of plot points are taken from the other works in this genre. This won't impede your enjoyment unless you've consumed those works, though. Going to update this review once I've finished the game completely.

I thought this game would be fun, but it's not. Many elements are not good. First of all, the interface is very confusing and very distant from regular cell phones. There isn't much thing you can do on your cellphone, there isn't investigations... it's just the message app, and it works in a very odd way with those bubbles, those 35 Ap all the time, even when people are just talking silly things such as "My name is X, my job is Y".... Although you can choose to make the texting quick, there is this annoying thing in which you have to click on "type a message" and then click on "send". I mean, what's the point? I think sending messages should be automatically. And there is no point on clicking "type a message" if your character will say only one thing (at least at the beginning). I think those canon dialogues should all be automatic. Not to mention that the background makes no sense. On each chat, the background is different and it has an artwork of said person. But I felt that with the color scheme of the game, with the lack of realism of the cell phone and etc, the interface feels tiresome for the eyes, as if it has too much information on the screen. I think it would be 1000x better if the background was simple and clean and the photo of the character would be on the avatar section, like on telegram app. Seriously, the interface is very polluted. The "type a message" part is always shimmering, so I don't know when exactly it's my time to say something on the conversation. I only know it's my turn when everybody shut up on the group chat. And this feels very artificial and shallow. Especially because it's a group chat full of people. I understand that the game needs a "trigger" to stop the story so you can answer something to make the story progress, but I just think everything was poorly done. The other problem of this game is the amount of useless blablabla on the group chat. Yeah, a lot of people keep saying "why am I here" but then they just start chatting as if it was those 90's chat when the internet didn't have social medias and you would have to go on something like "Omegle" (but with no videochat) and talk to strangers saying random things. I had to reread the synopsys of the game to catch up with the premises of the game, because all the chatting were so boring. The game doesn't have too much immersion for a "cell phone" genre (the cell phone is very limited, and the plot is weaky on the beginning). Maybe the developers should have make the game more like Simulacra, but without the bizarre and creepy glitching. I missed a "what to do" section on this game (As Simulacra have), because those bubbles keep shimmering and pulsating all the time. It's hard to understand which chat has a new message. I felt like checking all the chats all the tiiiime. This game is not fun to play. I would recommend watching it on youtube The conversations are very very boring, the characters are very very flat.

If you like phone/message app-based games/visual novels, definitely give this one a try. I haven't expected a lot while going into it but it's really well done. Some of the plot twists of the story were fairly predictable imo, but overall it was intriguing and I got invested in the fates of the characters pretty quickly. The interface looks neat and it's quick to get used to. The puzzle-minigames, on the other hand, felt a bit clunky at times, but what I appreciated was that they were logical, there was always a way of figuring them out and some of them are 'guessable' by trial-and-error, so you never feel stuck and the gameplay is fluid. The last thing I'd like to mention and appreciate is the communication with the devs. I encountered a bug in the first chapter which wouldn't let me proceed. When I mentioned it in the game discussion, the devs responded really quickly and fixed the issue. Of course, ideally this [i]should[/i] be a given but the truth is it isn't, and it's always going to be something I'll appreciate anyway. There's quite a lot of content - I'm a very fast reader and haven't explored the other endings yet, and still played almost 8 hours, so for the price it's a steal, really.

Another fine addition to my collection of games played through a phone screen.

Эта игра мой Guilty Pleasure.. Я знаю, что она далеко не идеальная и, для некоторых, даже плохая. Но она меня зацепила своим неким шармом и уникальностью с море однотипных игр на тематику убийственных игр. Если вы владеете нормальным уровнем английского, я мог бы порекомендовать эту визуальную новеллу, но только после своего развёрнутого анализа. Если не хотите глубоко углубляться в плюсы/минусы, я вам скажу - после второй главы игра идёт в лучшую сторону. То что показано в демо это худшее и самое нудное, что есть в игре, по моему субъективному мнению. Начнем с плохого, закончим хорошим. Минусы: - Однотипный визуал. Однотипный не в плане, что все картинки выглядят одинаково (хотя кто-то может так и скажет), но скорее что в игре нет спрайтов так таковых, а единственных индикатор диалога с персонажем это изменение обоев и их имя. Лично меня это очень бесило в начале игры, учитывая что эти же обои закрываются сообщениями персонажей. По итогу ты ассоциируешь персонажей не по внешности или манере речи, а только по цвету их сообщений/заднего фона. В начале игры, когда много персонажей, это может помешать понимаю раскрытия героев из-за мешанины. - Медленнаяяяя скороооость диалогооов. Из-за того, что диалоги в месенджере протекают в "реальном времени", ты видишь как персонажи печатают сообщения и потом его отправляют. На это уходит большое количество времени, поэтому за время прохождения игры, я просто пользовался кнопокй скипа сообщений. - Плохая эмуляция телефона на пк. Автор постарался, видно, что пытался как-то преобразить пустое пространство вокруг телефона... Но телефоном откровенно говоря не удобно пользоваться. Видно что игра планировалась для игры на телефонах, а не на пк. ТЕПЕРЬ К ПЛЮСАМ!! - Яркий и запоминающийся визуал: Хоть я и говорил, что он "однотипный" и никак не меняется с течением игры, но сам по себе он очень ярким и приятный. Смесь техно+хоррор+Frutiger Metro?? Как бы меня не бесило использования одного и того же artwork для всех превью, обложек и ВСЕГО промо.. но "спрайт" трейси крайне запоминающийся и один из лучших в игре. - Интересные загадки и испытания. Начиная с третьей главы и открытием новый тайн местности, появляются интересные загадки и испытания в каждой главе, которые лично мне было интересно решать и рассуждать над ответом. (не будет упоминать, что половина из них родом из TedEd...) - Сюжет мне понравился. Я сужу его по сравнению с другими представителями жанра Убийственных игр, и в этой игре он хорош. К середине сюжета игра настигает своего пика и когда ты думаешь что всё кончено, появляются новые повороты, что удивляют и заставляют продолжать игру. Сеттинг "подземного бункера под взорвавшейся атомной станцией" интригует, персонажи не боятся рассказывать о своем прошлом и искать решение проблемы. - Игра хорошо использует формат жанра Found Phone. Ломания 4-ой стены и интересные повороты с использованием стандартов жанра интересно показаны и удивляют. - James. My beloved <333 НУ СЕРЬЕЗНО ОН ТАКАЯ БУСИНКА СМЕШНОЙ Я ЕГО ЛЮБЛЮЮЮЮЮЮЮЮ - Финальное задание. [spoiler] Такое яркие изменение формата игры и ПРОТТВИСТ, с которого я был вахуэ и вправду ОЖИВИЛИ и заставили пересмотреть весь концепт игры. Лютый кайф, особенно если игрок следил за всей игрой и её деталями.[/spoiler] Итог: Лично я поставил бы 7.5/10. У игры есть яркие негативные стороны, но лично для меня положительные аспекты перекрывают все те проблемы.

Really good game, I may be stupid but some of the puzzles I feel like you could've only gotten by looking it up or brute forcing it which kind of sucked when it's important for story context. But, the overall story is really cool and the way you do the puzzles was interesting.

Not bad, but a thumbs down as it wasn't really interesting. Its Danganronpa-esque pull can only do so much, and the in-between puzzles aren't really clever.

"choices matter" ahahahahaha no

I don't think the story is that interesting. The minigames could be cool but the flashing and static makes it difficult to tell whats going on and is annoying. Big issue is the auto feature. Whenever you have to type a message you have to click on the screen (even if you;re not choosing from multiple options). I've never seen another game do that and for good reason. Having the entire game be told by text messages sounds interesting but it's not done well. Just seems worse than if you used VN Maker. I don't think this game is worth buying. I see potential if the developer is planning on making a new game