Harmony: The Fall of Reverie

I am beyond frustrated with the dizzying amount of interruptions and screen transitions. First an overbearing tutorial, then swapping back and forth between dialogue scenes and the augural board after just a few lines of text, I felt actually sick playing this. Story and characters seem to be interesting enough, but I lost all excitement for them after seeing that the augural board part of the game heavily pushes the player to forego the flow of relationships and pre-plan decisions to accumulate necessary amount of points for desired chapter endings.

The game is beautifully illustrated/animated, the music is soothing, the voice acting is fantastic. There is a nuanced plot that has a strong message about our modern world and community. It's well-designed and clearly a passion project. I recommend this game with a caveat - if you're struggling with how sh!t the world is currently and are feeling crushed and depressed under the weight of it all (esp. if you're living in the US in 2026), maybe wait to play this. The first half was fun, the second half I dragged myself through because it felt TOO REAL. I play video games to get a little window of escape from the dumpster fire that is our country and corrupt companies/billionaires dragging us towards WWIII, and realizing I was playing a choices-matter video game about that as a microcosm was...not fun. I dragged myself thru the end because I wanted to try for a happy ending in the video game at least, but man, it was emotionally exhausting getting there.

An absolute joy from start to finish, the storytelling, the setting, just everything about it clicked for me. Each Aspiration genuinely felt like their own distinct person. Bliss was hands down my favourite character, closely followed by Glory, though I would have loved to have seen more of Glory earlier in the game. Stumbling across another game featuring Jennifer English was also a lovely surprise, she seems to be popping up everywhere lately and I am absolutely not complaining.

I enjoyed the story of this game. At times I did feel like the number of choices I was making didn’t truly matter; like I was forced to go one way with no other option anyway. Overall I’d give this game a 8/10.

A mixed one for me. I enjoyed the story overall, and I loved the voice acting. Nice visuals to go along with it. However there was something about then being asked to analyse your potential story paths that took me out of the narrative somewhat. Particularly because I knew what path I'd like to story to take, but I had to spend a lot of time both figuring out the choices I needed to pick to take that path, but also knowing it still might not result in what you want to happen. At the end I would have loved to have made different choices, but was locked out of them due to choices I'd made ages ago and had no idea of the kind of impact they would have. Normally I don't mind that kind of stuff in games when it's a pre-determined narrative, but it does take the wind out of your sails when you're being asked to not only make choices, but to direct the story as well. The pacing was a little patchy; I didn't mind slowing the story down to allow the weight of grief to come across, but it did seem to dull the urgency of the main crisis the story had been building up to that point, like it was all put on hold to wait for you. A minor gripe in the grand scheme of things. I have to admit tha…

Harmony: The Fall of Reverie is a unique narrative adventure from DON'T NOD that stands out thanks to its striking art style and the clever Augural system, which lets you preview and shape future outcomes. The story explores identity, destiny, and human connections in an engaging way, while the choices feel meaningful and well integrated into the narrative. Although the gameplay is mostly dialogue-driven and may not appeal to everyone, fans of interactive storytelling will find a thoughtful and memorable experience. Rating: 8.5/10 ⭐️