Independent developer, MythicOwl, the team behind the fantastic puzzle game Hexologic, is back with more brain-teasing fun. This time it’s a series of puzzles contained in an adventure game and it puts jigsaw puzzles into a whole new perspective, literally. Harmony’s Odyssey is mostly a series of 3D dioramic jigsaw puzzles where every chapter provides you with another piece of the story in Harmony’s mythical world. This is our Steam PC review of Harmony’s Odyssey!
I find puzzle games relaxing and a nice comfortable change from the stressful antics of action games or first-person shooters. And Harmony’s Odyssey is no exception to that rule. This game contains over 100 puzzles comprised of 3D dioramic puzzles that take the challenge from a few pieces to maneuver to a dozen pieces and even to levels that contain multiple floors to solve, akin to a 3D chessboard.
Story-Driven Puzzle Solving
As you rearrange and solve each puzzle the completed solution reveals another slice of the ongoing, non-vocalized, non-captioned cinematic story. This is a tale of a little witch named Harmony. Harmony’s main role is to help her black cat get out of some troublesome spots. The story itself is cute and family-friendly. Along the way, you’ll meet some interesting characters like a three-headed dog person, a one-eyed bald man, etc.
The story itself did little for me personally. My drive was in completing the puzzles that are broken up into chapters almost. The range of difficulty was interesting as sometimes when you start a chapter the puzzles are pretty simple then they progress to dioramas which are quite complex.
This is one of the many complex jigsaw puzzles.
Thankfully the game has excellent controls that allow you to, not only zoom in and zoom out but also rotate the puzzles on their x-axis and y-axis. And you’ll find yourself doing a bit of that mainly due to the art style. All the washed-out colors with no distinct object borderlines make it sometimes difficult to notice the small details. This becomes more of an issue in the puzzle levels that are “spot the differences” type puzzles where you need to find how the right side differs from the left side, and some of these with moving objects.
Thankfully, the dioramic puzzles do give you some visual hints. Black lines on the pieces typically mean one of the surrounding pieces does not belong in this spot. A sparkly border as you move a piece into position tends to mean you matched up the neighboring piece.
Spot the differences puzzle left vs. right, in-game this one has objects in motion to make it more challenging!
More Than Just Jigsaw Puzzles
Along the way you’ll be introduced to some mini-games, e.g. run away from this neighbor who is chasing your cat. You need to get your cat to safety and not get trapped. Some of these mini-games tend to be tedious and slightly frustrating because they take you out of the laid-back puzzle-solving frame of mind.
Harmony’s Odyssey has some nice features like an arcade mode where you can directly play mini-games. Another perk is the ability to share each level with a friend, both in co-op and versus, both locally and via Steam’s Remote Play Together. While there are no time limits there is a starred score on each completed puzzle. While the PC version has Steam achievements they tend to be a bit odd to me. The achievements seemed to be tied to just progressing through the game versus doing something hidden or spectacular.
Harmony’s Odyssey is good at what it does. I can’t say this is my favorite puzzle game, I was more enthralled with Hexologic but that doesn’t mean Harmony’s Odyssey doesn’t have its own place at the table. This one is well worth the price of admission currently at $14.99!
Review code provided directly by MythicOwl.
