Sometimes, a new board game comes into your life that is simply soothing. It becomes your safe space when your peace is threatened by work, health, responsibilities, or mere minor inconveniences. You squeeze in games whenever you can, and they offer you the same 'aaaaah' feeling as a warm bath, some hot cocoa, or a perfect line in Tetris. Harmonies is exactly this kind of game - both a brain-teaser and a brain-soother.
Harmonies' chill vibes in part come from its solitary playstyle. Players primarily focus on their personal board, which represents a landscape they must fill with rivers, fields, trees, mountains, buildings, and animals. Each round, you'll draft colorful pebbles to construct these landmarks, as well as animal cards that add cubes to your board when certain patterns are created.
That drafting mechanic is the only time you'll interact with your opponents. It can be crushing when someone chooses the card or pool of tokens that you were gunning for, but there's enough available that you won't be scuppered for too long.
Harmonies shares a lot of DNA with drafting games like Azul, but the player action feels far less aggressive. Here, the board state changes less dramatically from turn to turn, so you can sit back, relax, and go with the flow.
The gorgeous art and components also have a distinct psychological effect. The vibrant, tactile tokens are immensely satisfying to place and arrange. Heck, I mainly play digitally via BoardGameArena, and stacking them on my player board still sparks joy. Whether you play in-person or not, you can always appreciate the adorable animal illustrations, too.
It's no surprise to me that a nature board game has become a source of comfort. My last cozy slippers board game was Wingspan, the bird collect-a-thon that I spent 80 hours playing online. Wingspan designer Elizabeth Hargrave once told me that even looking at nature pictures could have a calming effect on the mind. Harmonies is yet another perfect example of this in action.
So far, this is sounding like a relaxing, tactile tile-placing experience, but where is the strategy? Harmonies packs in more careful decision-making than its easy rules might first lead you to believe. That's all down to how the idyllic landscape you've built is scored.
There are two layers to point-scoring in Harmonies. Firstly, each type of landmark scores points in a unique way. Trees score more points when they're taller, while fields must be placed in groups to score at all. Mountains are worth more when they're tall, but they must be adjacent to another mountain to score at all. Similarly, buildings only score points if they're adjacent to three different types of landmark.
Rivers score differently depending on which side of the player board you use. Side A awards more points to longer rivers, while Side B scores water based on how many separate islands you create by splitting the board up with water tokens.
Secondly, you'll score points for successfully placing cubes from your chosen animal cards. These cubes can only be placed when a certain configuration of landmarks is created, and they'll be worth more or less depending on how difficult it is to create that pattern. Once you've placed all cubes from a particular animal card, it's moved off of your player board to make room for a newly drafted card.
Both forms of scoring merge together when it comes to Nature's Spirit cards. You choose one of these unique animal cards at the start of the game, and fulfilling its requirements offers you additional ways to score a particular type of landmark.
There's only so much tile space, and you can only work on four animal cards at a time. This means that careful planning is essential in Harmonies. The overlap of these two scoring systems creates a delightful puzzle where precise drafting and planning ahead help you fully optimize your landscape. Harmonies encourages you to pause and plan, creating a relaxing pace and a thoughtful gaming experience.
There's just one crack in the mindfulness mountains that could cause a landslide of frustration. Luck has a huge influence on how Harmonies plays out, and if it goes against you, it can be tough to recover from the blow.
Perhaps none of the animal cards available to draft fit with your current strategy. If that's the case for all players, those cards get stuck on sale, taking up space that would otherwise be filled with a changing carousel of more valuable animal cards.
The same can happen if too many tokens of the same type appear in the drafting pool at once. If no one wants to take three brown tokens in a single turn, your options for alternatives quickly become limited.
Sometimes, the pieces simply won't slot together in a satisfying way, however well you planned ahead. This can throw a spanner in the metaphorical spa day that gameplay usually offers, but it hasn't stopped me returning to Harmonies again and again. It has that 'one more game' factor, managing to be addictive without being aggressively competitive.
Have your own opinion of Harmonies? Tell us all about it in the Wargamer Discord. Or, for more recommendations, check out our best board games guide.