Harmony: The Fall of Reverie spotlights Don’t Nod’s selection mechanic

Don’t Nod Games is greatest recognized for its choice-driven journey video games — Life is Strange, Vampyr and Tell Me Why all characteristic player-made decisions. It’s change into one thing gamers anticipate from their titles. The studio’s newest title, Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, brings these decisions to the forefront.

We received the possibility to play among the sport in a preview. The decision-based mechanics are augmented by fascinating visuals and a superb story.

Harmony follows a girl named Polly who lives on an Earth-like world in a dimension known as Brittle. One day she is transported away from her mom and childhood residence to a different dimension known as Reverie. There she meets deity-like personifications known as Aspirations. She learns that she is definitely the goddess Harmony, the one one who can restore stability between the 2 realms along with her powers of clairvoyance.

The sport follows two intertwined tales: Harmony’s efforts to empower the Aspirations and save the decaying Reverie, and Polly’s makes an attempt to seek out her mom and examine the evil megacorporation exploiting Brittle. Each selection she makes impacts each worlds and ideas the stability of energy in favor of sure Aspirations. Ultimately, Polly/Harmony will determine the destiny of each worlds and who will management them.

The story and character design are the highlights of Harmony. Each of the characters has a definite look. The Aspirations look vibrant and stylized, whereas the people have a extra reasonable vibe. Reverie and Brittle are lovely settings to this story. Reverie’s otherworldly physics contrasts Brittle’s city decay.

The story is intriguing — paradoxically, regardless of the clairvoyance of the participant character, I used to be not capable of predict its beats.

Decision fatigue

Asking gamers to make story-altering selections comes with trade-offs. Players aren’t exactly certain how their decisions will have an effect on the narrative. A selection you make early within the sport can dictate your end-game choices. There’s no method to know till after you will have reached the purpose of no return, which could be irritating. On the opposite hand, this provides replayability to a sport and it makes the alternatives really feel natural.

Harmony, however, presents decisions with absolute transparency. The Augury exhibits you which of them outcomes your selection will have an effect on, who advantages and the seemingly outcomes. It exhibits you what number of “points” your decisions earn with every Aspiration, and what number of of these factors you’ll want to realize your required endings.

As refreshing as it’s to see the outcomes of your decisions, it’s arduous to shake the sensation that you just’re taking a look at a sport design doc fairly than an precise sport. The Augury actually appears like a flowery Twine board, particularly because the story and decisions change into extra sophisticated. Yes, it saves you plenty of guesswork, however it additionally feels a bit scientific. If what you preferred about earlier Don’t Nod titles was the thriller behind how your decisions labored, then Harmony may really feel empty.

Also, the way in which the Aspirations reply to Augury decisions feels completely different to how they work together with the participant. For instance, many of the Aspirations current their instances to Harmony (in-story) in a simple style and so they don’t, no less than at first, begrudge you if you happen to don’t observe their paths. However, inside the Augury, if you happen to don’t select they method they want you to, they change into passive-aggressive and sound irritated. It makes them appear weirdly two-faced.

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie launches on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and PC on June 8.