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 w...

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 ...

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 ...

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!

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.