Game: Harmony’s Odyssey
Genre: Puzzle, Adventure, Indie
System: Steam (Windows, Mac, and Linux)
Developer|Publisher: MythicOwl
Controller Support: Full
Price: US $14.99 | UK £11.39 | EU € 12,49
Release Date: October 19th, 2022
Review code provided with many thanks to MythicOwl.
Harmony’s Odyssey is a highly polished adventure puzzle game. This adorable game pits players against a variety of different kinds of puzzles from the jigsaw-like to spot-the-difference.
Story of Harmony’s Odyssey
The story of Harmony’s Odyssey is a goofy little tale of a cat that uses her witch’s wand to get into trouble. Then the mischievous little kitten steals some sausages, and you have to save them from the angry neighbours that are now chasing them to get their food back. This adorable little game follows these two around town, seeing what other kinds of trouble they can get into together.
In between each of the cartoony cutscenes, players will have to solve a wide variety of puzzles. There are spot-the-difference puzzles, jigsaw puzzles, and more. Players will have to solve each in order to put the city back in order if your spells accidentally shake things up a little bit.
You spend the vast majority of the game trying to save your cat from its own misdeeds, just like owning a real cat.
Gameplay
The gameplay requires the use of a controller; I tried to interact with the game with a mouse and keyboard, and I wasn’t very successful. The tutorials, screen controls, and control menu don’t even have options for how to play the game any other way. There is most likely a way to do it, but it seems that plugging in a controller will be preferred and make playing the game way simpler.
The vast majority of the puzzles were these little mixed-up jigsaws that needed to be put back in order. Most of the pieces have pieces that match up to them, like a cut-in-half car or tree or building. It was a little difficult in the beginning, but once I started to notice the pattern in the way the puzzle pieces were put together, it got much better.
Harmony’s Odyssey also has a neat little helpful addition to these puzzles; it lets you move groups of connected pieces of the puzzles together. By pressing and holding the X button, you can move large swaths of connected pieces across the board into place without having to break them up. This is also useful to double-check that all your pieces are in the correct place, even if you don’t intend to move them.
The Look of Harmony’s Odyssey
This game is super cute! The town is filled with vibrant characters, and each one of them is cartoony and adorable. The visuals are absolutely stunning, and the music that is paired with each section of the game really brings the whole thing together. I really love the whole look and feel of each location; there is something really beautiful about this magical little town.
There isn’t a whole lot of variety in the puzzles. While there are spot-the-differences and other kinds of puzzles, the jigsaw-style puzzles take up the vast majority of the levels. They are fun, but if you aren’t a fan of these kinds of puzzles, then you won’t like Harmony’s Odyssey overall.
Some Down Sides of Harmony’s Odyssey
In some places, it feels like aesthetics are more important than gameplay in Harmony’s Odyssey. For example, there are some levels where the clouds block the whole puzzle from view. Also, sometimes the colors and massive decorations make it a little difficult to see exactly what is going on around you.
I absolutely adore that there are brief tutorials before each new puzzle kind. However, you are completely unable to skip this, even if you know what is going on. While they were helpful, there’s nothing worse than sitting through a tutorial that you absolutely don’t need.
Minimalistic
Another thing that bothered me about Harmony’s Odyssey was its complete devotion to minimalism. In the same way that some quests can be difficult to complete in other minimalist games like Time On Frog Island, sometimes the lack of words and details can make figuring out what’s happening more challenging than it has to be. Thankfully, the tutorials replay over and over again until you exit, just in case your cat steps on your computer while it is playing as well.
At the beginning of the game, you get mostly 6-piece puzzles. They are pretty easy to get used to the layout and the controls. By the end of the chapter, the amount of pieces has expanded exponentially, and you are forced to really pay attention to get the pieces back in order.
But at the beginning of the next chapter, it went down to 6-piece puzzles again. I went from doing super challenging puzzles to doing the super easy ones again, and it was boring. I already knew how to do these; why was I being forced to do baby puzzles again? Didn’t I prove my puzzle smarts by getting this far?
I was super disappointed in this part of Harmony’s Odyssey. It was once again gameplay that was sacrificed for aesthetic reasons, which is something that I strongly dislike.
Conclusion
Overall, Harmony’s Odyssey is adorable and fun. There are tons of options; players can choose their difficulty, there is an arcade mode and more. But unfortunately, it’s a little bit difficult to play. There is a lot of accessibility and playability lost to maintain the look that the developers were going for.
Overall, Harmony’s Odyssey is super fun, adorable, polished, and a quality game with beautiful music, but it could use a little help in the usability department.
Final Verdict: I Like it.Â
