Harmonies (2024)

“Medium Game of the Year Winner – Harmonies (Johan Benvenuto)”

The reviewer found Harmonies to be a fantastic abstract puzzle game that is easy to get to the table and offers increasing depth with repeated plays, appreciating its beautiful appearance, although they personally would not choose to own it.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as a beautiful and fantastically fun 'cozy little puzzle' that offers replayability and a satisfying intellectual challenge, making it one of her recent favorite games.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as an incredibly accessible and engaging board game, highlighting its beautiful aesthetic, satisfying puzzle mechanics, and robust solo mode. They consider it a lasting 'brain burny crowd pleaser' that has remained a favorite on their table.

“Harmonies should be an inspiration, I guess, in more ways than one. It’s one I’m happy to have in my collection. And even if it’s not as exciting to read about, I’m glad we agree that it’s beautiful inside and out.”

“Overall, Harmonies is a brilliantly clever, stunningly made game, that suits a wide range of audiences. It’s quick to learn but has real strategic depth, and completing a successful landscape of a multitude of habitats is genuinely satisfying.”

“Geeks Under Grace praises "Harmonies" as an excellent tile-laying game, highlighting its wonderful artwork, chunky components, aggressive pricing, and simple rules that lead to deep emergent gameplay. The reviewer considers it one of the best games played in 2024 and a strong contender for the Spiel des Jahres.”

“This is a must-play game. It’s cosy gaming at its very best.”

The reviewer from Tantrum House considered "Harmonies" a pretty good game, despite expressing a slight reservation about its 3D pattern matching mechanic.

The reviewer highly praises "Harmonies" for its accessibility, engaging abstract mechanics, and enjoyable tile-laying and pattern-matching gameplay, considering it one of his top games for 2024 despite a minor concern about market rotation at lower player counts.

The reviewer found 'Harmonies' to be a highly enjoyable and satisfying game that is quick to set up and play. They praised its strategic depth despite its small box and animal theme, highlighting the rewarding experience of discovering synergies and combinations during gameplay.

The reviewer expresses strong enthusiasm for Harmonies, highlighting its beautiful presentation, engaging abstract strategy gameplay, and clear components, making them very excited to get it to the table.

The reviewer highly recommends Harmonies, giving it a 9 out of 10, praising its accessibility, beautiful art, and engaging gameplay, making it a solid choice for both new and casual board gamers.

“This expansion features unique artwork by Paul Echegoyen, enhancing players' imagination and challenging them as only Dixit can.”

“Stackable combotastic habitats A colorful abstract drafting puzzle perfect for the family.”

“For a quick, pleasant, and puzzly experience, Harmonies will always remain one of my go-to games. However, the lack of real goals is disappointing and means the experience isn’t as fulfilling as it could be.”

The reviewer highly praises the solo mode of Harmonies as efficient, quick, and cozy, delivering a deeply satisfying and complete puzzling experience. They consider it one of the best games in its category, highlighting its focused design, affordability, beautiful presentation, and overall excellent gameplay that truly sets it apart.

The reviewer praises 'Harmonies' as an excellent and beautifully produced game that successfully combines various elements to create a unique and highly enjoyable experience, making it stand out among similar titles.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as a fantastic, visually appealing, and enjoyable abstract puzzle game that is quick to learn and teach, despite a minor issue with rulebook clarity.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as a captivating spatial puzzle with simple rules that excels as a two-player game, offering a 'cozy' yet strategically engaging experience with lovely artwork and a satisfying three-dimensional aspect.

The reviewers found Harmonies to be a very solid and enjoyable puzzle game, praising its fantastic art and strategic depth despite its simple rules. They particularly appreciated the engaging gameplay, with one reviewer considering it a strong contender for game of the year.

“But, Harmonies is staying in the Gumbo Pot because the designer has balanced out three things (beauty, puzzle, time) well. Color me cozy.”

The reviewer praises "Harmonies" as a fantastic and engaging brain-burning puzzle, highlighting its quick game length, high replayability, effective solo mode, and the satisfying tactile quality of its components.

“By the middle of the game, Harmonies had far exceeded my expectations. This was, unexpectedly, one of the best releases of 2024, an ideal light-medium weight game.”

The reviewer highly recommends Harmonies, praising it as a compact and accessible game with beautiful artwork and strong table presence, ideal for both new and casual players despite a minor thematic weakness.

Harmonies is hailed as a fantastic, brain-burning abstract game that is highly recommended for its deceptively cute appearance, engaging challenge, and excellent combination of familiar mechanics that reward multiple plays.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as a very accessible game that offers a deep and evolving puzzle experience, getting better with each play, despite a potential for analysis paralysis for some players.

The reviewer highly recommends Harmonies, praising it as a very solid, cozy, and easy-to-get-to-the-table abstract game with appealing artwork, despite minor concerns about component quality and the solo mode's long-term replayability.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies, stating it delivered the meaningful decisions and engaging gameplay they desired from similar games like Cascadia, appreciating its naturalist themes and smart, intuitive mechanics.

“Harmonies is praised as a great game that combines simple design with thoughtful elements of direction and tension, making it well-deserving of its high rankings on various best-of lists.”

The reviewer highly enjoyed Harmonies, calling it a nice, snappy, and quick nature game with surprising strategic depth due to its varied scoring objectives and terrain interaction, even praising the components of its New Shores expansion.

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as a fantastic and easy-to-teach gateway game that looks great and offers enjoyable spatial puzzle gameplay with individual player boards and drafting mechanics.

“Harmonies stands out in the tile-placement genre by combining visually appealing components with deep strategic gameplay. Its unique 3D landscape mechanic offers a fresh take on pattern building, challenging players to think both horizontally and vertically.”

“Harmonies is a special game for a few reasons. It’s brilliant, it’s colorful, and it’s easy to teach—the perfect combination.”

The reviewers expressed strong positive feelings for 'Harmonies,' praising its beautiful aesthetics, engaging strategic gameplay, and overall enjoyable experience that makes it hard to stop playing.

The reviewers consider 'Harmonies' a super nice and engaging puzzle game, praising its simplicity, fast playtime, and high replayability. They believe it is easy to get to the table with various people and highly recommend it as a solid light-to-medium weight game.

The reviewer finds "Harmonies" to be a very fun and quick abstract strategy game that provides good tactical choices and an enjoyable solo experience without being overly complex or a "brain buster.

“I think I will always enjoy playing Harmonies. The puzzle and scoring strategies are delightful to explore and the table presence sets it all off very nicely indeed.”

The video describes Harmonies as a charming, nice, fast-playing, casual, and serene tile-laying and environment-building game.

“Overall, I really enjoyed my first play of Harmonies and no real faults jumped out at me. I would definitely like to play this one again.”

“Harmonies is a very fun puzzle that you’ll come back to time and time again… just watch out for the many expansions I assume will be coming soon!”

The reviewer highly praises Harmonies as a beautiful and relaxing puzzle game that offers engaging challenges and flexible strategies, providing an immersive experience perfect for unwinding.

The reviewer provides a detailed solo gameplay runthrough of 'Harmonies', explaining how players draft terrain tokens to create diverse landscapes and attract animals for scoring, emphasizing the strategic tile placement and combination possibilities.

“You’ll be sucked into its beautiful world of habitat creation and point-scoring, to the point where you’ll forget about winning altogether!”

“Harmonies masterfully blends its drafting system and token-laying mechanics to create a satisfying gameplay loop with just the right amount of tension in its decision-making. At its core, it's an elegant optimization puzzle that offers a fresh challenge every time you play.”

Harmonies is praised as a brain-burning and delightful puzzle game with beautiful production and challenging layers that make it highly enjoyable and replayable, though a particular reviewer wished for more thematic animal tokens.

“Overall, I think Harmonies is great! It’s got a lot of the core elements of a game that’s set up for broad appeal: it looks great, has nice tactile components, and is approachable without sacrificing strategy.”

“While you are playing check the patterns on the bottom of your Animal cards. When you are placing tokens on your Personal board, you are trying to match these patterns.”

The playthrough of Harmonies highlights a challenging and engaging puzzle experience where players strategically place tokens to build landscapes and satisfy animal scoring conditions, which can lead to moments of stress but also rewarding outcomes.

The reviewer found 'Harmonies' to be a good game with solid production and engaging mechanics, but it lacked a unique spark that would make it a permanent addition to their collection compared to other similar titles.

“Dans Harmonies, construisez un paysage sur votre plateau en posant des séries de 3 pions et faites apparaitre des forêts, des montagnes, des champs et des villes. Sélectionnez ensuite les bonnes cartes Animal et reproduisez leur habitat pour qu’ils viennent peupler votre région.”

“For me, Harmonies hits all the right notes when it comes to a quick and fun abstract game. It’s quick setup time and easy to comprehend rules means that it can definitely be taught to new board gamers or even young players.”

The reviewer rates Harmonies as a good game, but finds it doesn't live up to the considerable hype it received. While enjoyable, he considers other similar games to be better and does not plan to keep Harmonies in his personal collection.

The reviewer finds Harmonies to be a good game that he would willingly play, but he doesn't consider it great or particularly special compared to other similar titles in the genre. He believes the game's hype might be unwarranted, noting that the market for cards can sometimes feel stagnant.

The reviewer finds 'Harmonies' to be a good game, but ultimately not a great one, feeling it doesn't live up to the considerable hype and doesn't offer a special enough experience to warrant a permanent spot in his collection, especially when compared to similar titles.

The reviewers found Harmonies to be a generally enjoyable and relaxing game with appealing production quality and art, despite some minor issues with rule clarity and concerns about its long-term replayability.

The reviewers offered a mixed but generally positive opinion on 'Harmonies.' While some found it to be a relaxing and enjoyable experience with excellent production quality, others felt it was a mediocre game lacking in variety compared to similar titles.