GBP (£)
EUR (€)
Harmonies
Backorder Item Notice
Please note the expected date shown above is a guideline only. Backorder items will typically arrive within the next 2 months, however, in some instances they may take longer. Any orders that contain a Backorder Item will not be dispatched until all items in the order are available. Please keep this in mind before you place any orders that contain both in-stock and Backorder items. Please place a separate order to receive in-stock item(s) sooner! For more information please see our Backorder FAQs.
You could earn
3438 Victory Points
with this purchase
Related Products
Description
Harmonies captivates with its innovative mechanics: 3D landscape creation, tile placement, and pattern development. Each decision impacts the ecosystem you create, offering a deep and satisfying gaming experience. The game includes a solo mode and an "expert" mode, adding the spirits of nature to the game's animal cards. With engage in a unique gaming experience where you create your own dreamlike world, combining landscapes and animals to earn victory points. Harmonies offers straightforward rules that open the door to profound tactical decisions, making each game a new challenge. Whether you're looking to enjoy a thoughtful solo game or engage in competitive play with friends, Harmonies caters to all your gaming needs. Harmonies is a delightful blend of tile placement and pattern matching mechanics. Each turn presents players with the challenge of optimizing their token placements to maximize scoring opportunities. Each type of landscape offers different configurations to score. The animal cards provide additional avenues for scoring and add another layer of strategy to work the brain. Trying to make both work together is challenging and satisfying. The game's components, including the insert and wooden tokens, enhance the overall experience. The art is simply gorgeous. I'm not sure if it's a widespread issue but my cards are pretty curved which makes it hard for the cubes to stay on. I designed a card holder to help keep the card flat and have a spot for the cubes.
Player Count: 1-4
Time: 30-45mins
Age: 10+
In The Jungle…
Designed by Johan Benvenuto, Harmonies sees you build three dimensional habitats, scoring for each animal you manage to house. After the success of 2021’s Cascadia, habitat building was to inspire a slew of games but Harmonies comes as a fresh, colourful addition to the hobby. Everything about the game is designed to make you feel warm and fuzzy, from its gorgeous brightly coloured artwork of cutesy animals to the satisfying chatter of wooden terrain tiles being drawn from a cotton bag. That’s not to say this game is all style and no substance, there is more definitely a great game here too.
The Mighty Jungle…
In Azul form, three terrain tokens are drawn from the bag and placed on a series of tiles in the middle of the table. There are a number of colours/types, such as grey mountains, red buildings, yellow fields, blue rivers, brown tree trunks and green foliage. Each animal will dictate exactly what type of terrain it wants to live in, illustrated on their card. Each card will have a number of animal cubes and for every habitat you create you can place a cube, scoring for the highest number revealed by the end of the game. For example, the Racoons will only live on your board if you surround a yellow field token with three blue river tokens. Do this and you get to place one of the two raccoon cubes onto the field token. Only one animal cube can be placed on a terrain token, however any other elements of the habitat can be utilised for a multitude of terrains. On your turn you will need to take a card, of which you can only have four at one time, then take one group of three tokens, placing them all onto your personal player mat before placing as many animal cubes as you possibly can. Once an animal card is empty of cubes you can turn it over to score at the end of the game, freeing up a slot for a new card on your next turn. The game will continue until either the bag of tokens is emptied or until any player has only three empty spaces left on their board.
Finally, scores are tallied and highest wins. But on top of the animal cards you can also score for the types of terrains you have on your mat. Fields give you points if you connect them in pairs or more around your board. Forrest tokens give one point by default. But if you can place them atop a wood token, then they’re worth three or two wood tokens and then seven. The height of each Mountain determines the number of points you score. However, a Mountain is worth 0 points if it is not adjacent to another Mountain. Buildings need to be surrounded by at least three other types of tokens and the length of the River determines the number of points you earn, counting the number of tokens from one end of the river to the other by the shortest path and you only score your best river. If the river’s path contains more than 6 consecutive tokens, score 4 points for each token beyond the 6th.
The Lion Sleeps Tonight!
There is such a lovely cozy feeling to playing Harmonies but don’t let that fool you into thinking that it’s easy. Depending on what type of animal cards come out will dictate the direction you need to go. Like all good abstract puzzle games there are many routes to points and you can’t go for them all. I have now played it with 10 year olds through to 40 year olds and no matter where you sit on the spectrum there is a puzzle for you. Unlike some other entries into the nature theme, the artwork here has a much broader appeal and feels more like a truly family style game. Once you’ve played a few times then you can flip your player board over to reveal an alternate side with some alternate scoring opportunities. On this board you score for every island you manage to create by splitting up the board with river tokens. This kind of alternate game is alway appreciated in such a small game. Also if you want a little more bite, you can add spirits into the game which add an overarching scoring mechanism pulling you in multiple directions throughout the game.
I am not usually a lover of abstract games but there is such a charm about Harmonies that draws you in but it’s the interesting puzzle that keeps you engaged.
Eager to share your own thoughts on some of your favourite board games? Just fill out our quick and easy application here to become a zatu blogger!
If you liked this blog on Harmonies, you can click here to buy it today. Let us know your thoughts on our social media channels @/zatugames
Overview
There has been quite the buzz around this little game for a few months now since its release in April 2024 and with it rising to the top of BGGs hottest list, I just had to jump on the wagon and get my hands on a copy of Harmonies!
From the moment I held this box in my hands, I knew it was going to be something special.
With Harmonies being 30 to 45 mins per game, Harmonies is the perfect filler game and portable enough to take on your travels and with the added benefit of its 1-4 player count you can also play solo.
Harmonies is a cross over between Azul with its draw from a bag system to Cascadia’s pattern tile/token placement mixing the best of both worlds, in well, perfect harmony….
So, lets dive into the box and discover what delights hide inside….
Presentation & Unboxing
The vibrancy of the Harmonies box is echoed in the contents, from the bright colours of the chunky tokens to the artwork on the cards themselves.
The overall contents give off deluxe vibes with the beautiful cards being of a linen finish and of tarot size (70x120mm), which both look striking on the table and feel nice in the hand.
The linen finish game boards are double-sided which affords some variety in gameplay.
One thing to mention is that when I received my copy of Harmonies, the cards were slightly bent. I have since discovered that this issue is fairly widespread with people having posted similar problems online. There are reports that this can cause an issue during play as the cards do not sit flat and the tokens do not sit in position. I on the other hand did not feel it effected our enjoyment or gameplay.
Gameplay
With the rule book only being 12 pages, the process of unboxing to playing is minimal, making it one of the easier games to get to the table, sometimes you just don’t want a massively crunchy Eurogame.
With a BGG weight of 2/5 Harmonies is fairly lightweight and is recommended for ages 10+. I feel that this game is best learnt by actually playing and definitely to learn from your mistakes as I did on several occasions. I had many moments of ‘why did I place that there?’ and ‘I’ve gone and blocked myself again’ which is part of the fun of Harmonies.
The main objective of Harmonies is to create your own unique ecosystem.
Turns are made up of 1 mandatory action which involves taking 3 tokens from the central board which must then be placed on their player board, then 2 optional actions of either taking 1 of the animal cards from the central display and/or placing an animal token which is achieved by completing that specific animal’s habitat. Each player can take any of the above actions in any order on their turn.
Order and placement are key to winning the game, you must be meticulous on where you are placing your token to enable you to maximise board space and VPs.
You achieve this by stacking tokens to create 3D landscapes which include trees, mountains, buildings, fields and rivers or by building a particular animal habitat as depicted on the card. For example, a ladybird requires 1 green and 1 yellow token to be placed adjacent to one another. You can score multiple times on 1 card with VPs increasing every time a habitat is completed – see photo for reference
The stacking of the tokens is thematic, for example, trees, mountains and buildings cannot be built on water, trees and mountains score more points depending on how high they are, trees are made up of either 1 or 2 brown tokens with 1 green token sitting on top and mountains only score when adjacent to other mountains (creating a mountain range). River/water tiles can be scored in 2 different ways depending on what side of the player board you are using and building are only scored if adjacent to 3 or more different colours.
The game ends when either the bag of tokens has been depleted or on your turn you have 2 or fewer empty spaces left on your board. Its then time to tally up those Victory Points!
Final Thoughts and Summary
Overall, myself and all that I have played with so far have really enjoyed Harmonies, both aesthetically and mechanically it’s a top game for me and feel it will have an established place on my gaming shelf for some time.
Zatu Score
You might like
- If you like Cascadia
- Bright and colourful
- Quick gameplay
Might not like
- Very abstract theme
- Not very complex