Harmoni-us
Harmoni-us
A game by Jon-Pierre Heroux, Ben Houge, Justin P. Rounds, and Jeffu Warmouth
created for the Gr8 Artgames Gam, Goethe Institut Boston, 2017
Harmoni-us is a top down iso city-builder sim where the player is given agency over a small community of musical creatures affectionately named Harmonians.
When Harmonians come into contact with one another, they learn to coexist by creating beautiful symphonies with one another. Not all Harmonian relationships come easy, however. Sometimes their songs come into conflict, creating strange new sounds that confuse the local populace. This disturbance can alter the rate of population, change the economy of resource production, and ultimately disrupt the steady growth of the settlement.
Players choose whether they want to encourage this new growth by being inclusive to the new Harmonian populations, finding new and interesting songs, and learning how to create the buildings that make the immigrating Harmonians feel at home. Or they may choose to censor and convert the foreign Harmonians, and seize their old homes to better support the current economy and sound-scape.
Harmoni-us is a game in a constant state of flux, where the player must decide the destiny of their budding community. Harmonians are always learning and growing from the current state of affairs, and no two soundscapes from a playthrough will turn out the same. Ultimately the player must decide for themselves: does harmony mean many voices as one, or a voice of one for all?
Read Paper presented at Foundation of Digital Games
