With amazing artwork and a compelling story of corporate greed, can Don’t Nod keep using Harmony: the Fall of Reverie to show they still know how to make a compelling game?
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is the newest game, joining the ever-growing roster of Don’t Nod’s choice-based adventures. Recent games from the developer include Gerda: A Flame in Winter and Twin Mirror, both of which met the market with mixed success, with both gaining a cult following from Don’t Nod fans.
Perhaps their most famous game is Life Is Strange, an episodic release that came out in 2015 and still has a large online fanbase. Life is Strange paved the way for Don’t Nod to become a developer synonymous with choice-based games. This gave me high hopes for Harmony: The Fall of Reverie to follow in the footsteps and be another meaningful release for Don’t Nod.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie will be released on PC and Switch on June 8th and on PlayStation and Xbox on June 22nd. The choice-based adventure explores themes of family, loss, and self-discovery in a five-plus-hour experience that allows the player to discover the world of Reverie through the eyes of the unsuspecting protagonist.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is set in the near future, in a version of the world where surveillance comes from million-dollar corporations to a whole new level. The mega-company that has taken over is Mono Konzern (MK), which has the protagonist, Polly’s hometown, under near-constant surveillance. On Polly’s return, she finds that MK may also have some form of control over the populace and is putting her community in danger.
Unfortunately, Polly’s homecoming is not one of celebration, as her mother has disappeared suddenly without a trace. Upon returning home, she reconnects with some friends and family, although all notice she is not herself. This is because Polly discovers she has the gift of clairvoyance, which connects her to another realm called Reverie.
Reverie is the home of the Aspirations of Humanity: Bliss, Power, Bond, Truth, Chaos, and Glory. In this realm, Polly becomes Harmony, a new Aspiration who has the ability to choose the Aspiration that will become the Heart of Reverie and rule over Reverie. It will be this Aspiration’s duty to bring balance between their world and ours.
With the help of her old friends Nora and Lazlo, as well as an old crush who re-emerges from the past, Polly discovers there was more to her mother than she had known and that she, too, had a deep connection to Reverie. The story of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is used most to untangle the many themes the game wishes to discuss. The most prevalent of these is the danger of unchecked corporations with too much control and the importance of family.
The gameplay of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is kept very simple. Rather than the previous mechanic of exploring the environment and actively interacting with characters, the game has a far more passive communication method. Characters will instead approach Polly or Harmony, depending on the realm, and they will be the ones to start conversations. This does make for a less interactive playing experience; however, I did not find this a negative as it allowed me to sit back and enjoy the story.
The dialogue is shown off-screen, with sprites of the characters popping up next to them as they speak. Voice actors also play each of the characters, meaning the emotions within the lines are clear despite the fact that it is mostly a reading experience. The exception to this is Polly’s internal monologue. I would have liked to have this voiced as well, as I would sometimes miss key moments of information due to the lack of narration.
The game also has an auto-text feature that allows a far smoother transition in dialogue. This feature has the option of different speeds, which is wonderful when considering accessibility. I used the auto-text feature nearly exclusively while playing, as it added a lot more flow between the characters when they were talking.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie also allows the player to skip back if the dialogue is missed, which can be crucial in some of the faster-paced moments. One of my favorite moments of this in action is when Chaos and Power had an argument. With the auto-text activated, they cut each other off very well, making for excellent timing in the back-and-forth of their argument.
Beyond pressing A to move through dialogue, the other element of gameplay in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is seen in the Augural. This is a timeline of possible futures all mapped out for Polly, with the differing paths making a Web that can be explored thanks to Polly’s newfound clairvoyance.
At certain moments, the game switches to the view of the Augural, which has a selection of choices, called nodes, for the player to choose between. Most nodes give the player an idea of what they should expect from the paths available, with a small amount of information suggesting possible outcomes from that path.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie will sometimes allow the player to skip ahead multiple nodes to explore what that path will lead to in more than just the immediate future. As the game progressed, the Augural became more complicated; although it was explained clearly in the game, I was never confused by how it worked.
Some of these new types of Nodes included ones that would only open after a certain number of other options had been played, ones that would reveal secrets down the line, and ones that would give more crystals, called Egregore, to the inspiration that had helped present that choice.
This made for really interesting gameplay as I would often be jumping around the Augural, trying to find the most interesting paths as well as trying to gain more Egregore for the inspirations I liked the most. Along with the Augural assisting the player, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie also has a Heart Screen.
This allows the player to see the total amount of Egregore they have collected for each of the Inspirations. The Inspirations with more power would be more likely to help Polly at the end of the game, and we’re also more likely to be accepted as the Heart of Reverie.
The Augural also makes it clear when one of the Nodes will block off those around them, making it very easy to navigate. Sometimes, two paths can be explored at once as you speak to different characters in a certain order. I expected this to lead to some of the scenes in the Nodes being jumpy and not quite fitting together.
This was not the case, however, as Harmony: The Fall of Reverie did a really good job of making every Node fit together seamlessly. At one point, I quickly switched from a conversation with Lazlo to Jade, and the game kept up perfectly, simply making it look as though Jade was interrupting and confidently carrying the story forward.
Another particularly interesting use of the Augural was when Polly lost a loved one and was grieving. Rather than continuing to present multiple possible futures, the game slows down. The web of decisions becomes a single line. Tasks go from “encourage the people to riot” to “wake up” and “take a shower.” I found this to be a beautiful and accurate depiction of how grief can slow everything down and change what is important and challenging to a person.
While I enjoyed the majority of the Augural mechanic, I did find myself looking forward to seeing what path would lead me to get Egregore for my favorite Aspirations. I loved Bliss for her high energy, thanks to the voice actor and the expressive animations of her emotions. She was a lot of fun to have in scenes and was the most fun of the Aspirations to see in the realm of Brittle rather than Reverie.
I would also look for paths that would take me to Chaos as I found they had the most interesting opinions about the events unfolding in both his world and the real one. Obviously, as you can tell from the name, they had many paths that would lead to outrageous and fun outcomes—cleaning up a mess after Chaos was a highlight of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie.
The art style of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is an incredible display of a simple design being pushed to its most beautiful. There is limited animation; the sprites of each character are on screen during dialogue and often lip-sync along with their dialogue. They also express emotions through differing stances they can flick between. As I said previously, Bliss has some of the most exciting of these, with her overly animated style really coming alive on screen.
The artwork of the locations in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is also amazingly executed. At the beginning of the game, we are introduced to Reverie and are shown the beautiful realm that appears to have taken much influence from the ancient Greek depictions of Mount Olympus.
The player also sees Polly wandering through her home, a Mediterranean-inspired town with a large gap between the rich and poor. This is again presented exquisitely within the game’s artwork. The skyscrapers of MK are surrounded by native Oxian, the fictional natives of the land, structures that are clearly more at home in Brittle.
This same artwork also demonstrated the ways the Aspirations are out of place in the real world. Even Polly’s Reverie form, Harmony, seems somewhat at odds with the real world when we see her in it. And it isn’t just the overly vibrant Aspirations that feel this way.
Obviously, the hyper-color Bliss and Chaos feel out of place, but even Bond and Truth, with more muted tones, appear out of place in the Brittle whenever they appear there. And Power and Glory’s impressive suits are completely at odds with the casual clothing of those around them.
When the game chooses to include them, the cutscenes are truly works of art. The animated style of the sprites transitions perfectly into the cutscenes. Unfortunately, these cinematics are few and far between, with most of them appearing at the end of the game. Despite their infrequency, it is safe to say they are worth the wait, as they were some of the most memorable parts of the game.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie also has a fantastic sound design that helps bring the world to life. In Reverie, the music is often calming, although it often builds in more tense moments, particularly when Power and Chaos are in conflict, which happens increasingly often towards the end of the game.
The soundscapes created in Brittle are full of life; the world feels real as the sounds of animals, a strong breeze, and children playing all take place beyond Polly’s window. The sound also allowed for more immersion. In the opening, the player is met with the sound of a heartbeat as Polly discovers Reverie and the whole realm it opens for her.
This immediately allowed me to join her in her emotions as we both learned of this new world. Another thing that helped with this in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie was the voice acting. Again, Chaos and Bliss’ voice actors have to be congratulated on the life and energy they brought onto the screen, but they aren’t the only ones. Lazlo, a friend of Polly’s in the real world, brought a great deal of comfort through his tone, expressing kindness and anger equally well and finding interesting ways to develop the character within both.
Another stand-out performance was found in Truth. This was, rather, through the effects added to the voice and acting. Many differing performances were laid onto one another in a creative way that added gravitas and wisdom to the Aspiration. I was also sure I heard a voice that sounded like Chaos hidden within the performances. I am unsure whether this was intentional, but it was very effective at adding to the bond between the pair as well as the similarities they often had in their stories.
Harmony: The Fall of Reverie has many different endings that can be affected by Polly’s decisions in the real world and Harmony’s decisions in Reverie. I found that many of my fairly early decisions had a big impact on the game’s ending and the Heart Screen, as they informed me which of the Aspirations was particularly powerful as I made larger and larger choices.
I found my ending to be very satisfying and suited the decisions I had made leading up to it. Beyond this, I was genuinely moved when certain characters were affected by these choices. Towards the end of Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, I was asked to choose between several paths, with the one I chose ending in the death of a character. I was genuinely moved by this outcome and felt sadness along with the characters as we sat in the grief my own choices had caused.
It’s safe to say Don’t Nod haven’t lost their ability to make an audience cry. Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a beautifully paced, amazingly acted, gorgeous game. There is enough replayability with the multiple endings to make it a lengthy and fun experience. The stunning artwork is wonderful to behold, and the game certainly has a powerful message about large corporations and the sanctity of one’s home.
