Harmonies Review – Finding Inner Peace in a 3D Wildlife Sanctuary

Disclaimer: Harmonies was provided for free by VR Distribution, although the writing and opinions of this article are my own.

Picture this: it’s raining outside. You’re curled up by the window in your cosiest PJs, a warm drink in hand, watching the droplets pitter-patter against the glass. It’s the kind of day that calls for relaxation, and there’s no better way to unwind than with a board game.

Enter Harmonies, the latest release from Libellud, a tranquil pattern-matching game designed for moments just like these.

How to play

Harmonies invites you to slow down and enjoy creating habitats for charming, cartoonish animals. The gameplay is as simple and soothing as its theme: placing terrain tokens on your player board to build patterns.

Each turn, you’ll select one of five groups of three terrain tokens from the central display. After placing these tokens on your board, you can optionally take an animal card.

These cards feature adorable animal illustrations, specific patterns to complete using your terrain tokens, and a number of cubes showing how many groups of this animal are available from the card.

When you successfully match a pattern, you’ll:

1. Take an animal cube from the card.
2. Place the cube on one of the tiles in the completed pattern.
   This tile is now “claimed” and can’t host additional cubes, but it can still contribute to other patterns.
3. If it was the last cube on the card, put the card aside; you’ll score its points at the end of the game.

For example, raccoons will only settle if you surround a yellow field token with three blue river tokens. Complete this pattern, and you’ll earn six points by placing one of the raccoon cubes on the field tile.

While constructing habitats, you’ll also gain points from the different terrain types. Here’s how each type scores:

• Fields: Earn points when connected in pairs across your board.
• Forest tokens: Worth 1 point by default, but placing them atop two wood tokens increases their value to 7 points.
• Mountains: Scored like forest tokens but must connect to at least one other mountain for higher points.
• Buildings: Require at least three unique surrounding terrain types to score.
• River tokens: Score 2 points for each tile in your longest unbroken chain.

The game ends when one player has fewer than three empty spaces left on their board. Finish the round, tally up all the points (including animal cards and terrain), and the player with the highest score wins!

Patterns within patterns

Few games are as disarming as Harmonies.

When I played, my competitive instincts melted away, leaving me content to focus on completing terrain patterns and adding animals to my board. Winning felt secondary, just the act of pattern-matching was satisfying in itself.

Take the trash pandas, for example: surrounding a yellow field with three blue river tiles earns you points. But the real fun lies in figuring out how to reuse those river tiles. Could they help attract another raccoon? Or maybe a completely different animal?

Rarely are you working on a single animal pattern at a time. More often, you’re juggling three or four simultaneously, pondering how to weave them together while making the most of the random assortment of tiles from the market. It’s an engaging challenge without feeling overly complex or frustrating.

Compared to another cosy, rainy-day favourite like Calico, Harmonies feels more open-ended. While Calico, adorable cats and all, requires strict logic-driven decisions, Harmonies gives you room to explore and create.

Do you want to construct buildings for the squirrels? Or maybe it’s better to start crafting rivers for the otters? The market has tiles for both. So what will you choose? Usually, there’s no obvious “best” option. Instead, there are multiple appealing paths, influenced by your cards, the tiles available, and the state of your board.

This lack of a clear best choice was one of my favourite aspects of Harmonies. By offering freedom in its decisions, the game lets you relax, focus less on optimising, and enjoy the simple pleasure of pattern-matching.

I don’t want to go home

Initially, this was going to be a much harsher review. During my first plays of Harmonies, I found myself enchanted by the peaceful, pattern-matching Shangri-La it offered. But then… it ended.

Too soon.

The game’s abrupt conclusion felt like someone had dumped a bucket of cold water over me. I wasn’t ready to stop. I wanted to linger in my happy place, creating patterns and welcoming furry little animals.

I was fully prepared to criticise Harmonies for being too short until I played on the second (blue) side of the player boards. This side stretched the game just enough that, by the end, I felt satisfied.

It’s at this point, when the game ends, that you get to appreciate the landscapes everyone has created. Each game, and every player, produces something unique. One person might construct towering mountains and dense forests, while another’s board could feature sprawling fields and winding rivers.

The way these landscapes come together, visually represented through terrain tokens, is an absolute delight. But this brings me to Harmonies’ biggest shortcoming: the component quality.

Normally, I don’t dwell on components in reviews, but here, it’s hard to ignore. The terrain tokens and bag are excellent, but the cards feel thin, flimsy, and were already bending before our first play. Similarly, the player boards were warped and stubbornly refused to lie flat.

To be fair, this might be exacerbated by living in a tropical environment. However, after playing so many well-produced board games recently, the noticeable step down in quality here was disappointing.

That said, Harmonies is very much a “what you see is what you get” board game. If the idea of building terrain patterns to attract adorable animals appeals to you, then this game will undoubtedly find a place in your collection.