Harmony Board Game Review – IGN

Harmony board game

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Harmony manages to wrap a lot of stuff into a compact box because you will quickly realize it when you lift the lid. Inside, you will find three independent rulebooks in English, French and German, as well as QR codes that link to a quick video overview of English, French, German and Italian.

Below the teaching booklet are four solid, double-sided players' boards and a double-sided central board for drafting tokens during the game. Each set of colorful wooden tokens is packaged in its own plastic bags for tissue to be shipped during transportation, but you may find it easier to store them all in the included linen strap bag. The tokens themselves are high-quality, surprisingly lightweight, making a satisfying tactile sound when they sway in the bag.

The box includes a built-in organizer that keeps components neat before and after the game. The organizer's side has a folding cardboard cover that accommodates the animal and nature's spirit cards, as well as a bag of small plastic orange and transparent cubes representing the animal. Like the box itself, the card displays a vibrant, stunning work of art from various animals in their natural habitat.

Four double-sided reference cards are also included – one for each player – summarizing how each biome is rated and providing a quick count of how many wooden tokens exist in each color. A small, colorful scoring pad makes it easy to improve points at the end of the game.

While the built-in organizer is a welcome touch, you need to shake the wooden token in the linen bag quickly and secure it to get everything fitted properly; otherwise, the lid will not be flush with the box. That is, setup and disassembly are very fast because overall there are not many components to manage. Once everything is neatly packaged, the compact box can be stored horizontally or vertically on the shelf without worrying about internal transfer or spilling components.

Rules and how they play

Harmony’s goal is to create a series of interconnected habitats for your animals by placing tokens on the player’s board to get the highest score. After a quick setup, the first player selects three random tokens from the central board and places all in any arrangement they like. However, once a token is placed, it is impossible to move it in the rest of the game.

What makes the harmony stand out is the ability to stack certain tokens, introduce a sense of verticality to the board, and provide additional scoring opportunities when certain criteria are met.

Brown tokens, for example, can be used as the basis of a tree, but they won't score on their own unless they are placed on top. Mountains are built with one to three gray tokens, only scored if they are adjacent to at least another mountain. Fields represented by yellow tokens are divided into two or more pairs that cannot be stacked, while rivers (blue tokens) scores gradually increase, the longer you can connect them. It was the most complex building at first. They need a basic token – brown, gray or red – with red tokens on it, and if at least three unique color tokens are adjacent, they will score uniformly.

While this alone can create a fun game, the real strategy comes from drafting animal cards. Each card has a specific token configuration along the bottom, representing the unique habitat required by the animal. For example, a crocodile may need a swamp composed of a tree and a small river beside it, while the Meerkats prefer a rocky structure adjacent to the fields.

On each player's turn, they have the option to draft one of the five available animal cards and add them to their chart, as well as a certain number of animal cubes that indicate the number of times the depicted habitat must be built. Each time you successfully create a habitat displayed on the card, the Bottommost animal cube is removed and placed on the player board to match the habitat as shown. When you delete the cube, you will get more and more points.

There is no fine for not completing an animal card, but since you can only be in four cards in the picture at a time, strategic choices are important. While you might be tempted to pick up a bunch of animal cards early, you may find it difficult to complete the required habitat and miss out on valuable points.

The real strategy in harmony is to optimize habitat layout on the player board – maximizing the number of animal cards you can complete while keeping the basic ratings of each biome in mind. Harmony is an elegant optimization problem, and a new challenge is raised every time you play. While each player is primarily focused on his own personal board, there is still quite a bit of interaction as you can prevent your opponent from drafting certain markers or animal cards that perfectly complement their habitat.

At the end of each turn, players will randomly draw three tokens from the pouch if they draft a new animal card. This constant churn forces players to stay flexible – there are few opportunities to plan too far, especially in advanced player number games where more turns happen between yourself. This unpredictability is where harmony shines. Each turn brings a delicate urgency: You are doing as much as you can on the board before the game is over, while juggling smart decisions and effective token position.

It’s not uncommon to have a select player board in the later round that allows you to draft animal cards and rate them immediately without having to build additional habitat. This is a very satisfying reward that can reward careful planning and earn some quick points as you reach the end of the game.

The game ends when the pouch runs out of the token or any player leaves two or fewer spaces on the board, triggering the final round. Afterward, the players improved their points and announced the winner.

Once you are happy with the base game, you can add some optional elements to shake the gameplay. First is the spiritual card containing nature. At the beginning of the game, each player drafts one of two cards, each requiring you to build and complete a specific habitat to unlock an alternative scoring method for a specific biome. For example, you may earn extra points for building larger clusters of a specific terrain type or reaching certain heights of mountains or trees. These cards introduce new scoring opportunities and encourage you to rethink your usual strategies.

There is also a minor side on the player board that changes the river’s score. Instead of creating a long river, you need to form an island by isolating the land with water tiles, adding another layer of space planning to the puzzle.

Harmony board game