Brock: What’s that noise from the woods? Is it the call of a rare bird?

“Coo. Coo.”

No, that’s not quite what I’m hearing…

“Two. Two.” Yes, that’s it! “Two… Minds!” Once again, I have lured Dan into the mountains to talk about a board game.

Dan: I can’t believe I agreed to let you write the intro.

Welcome to a pleasant river valley.

Brock: You’re the one who followed me up this heavily wooded hiking trail. And all it took was the promise of some GORP and the dirty magazines my brother stashed in a hollow log.

But now for the real reason I brought you here: this time we’re talking Harmonies! Designed by Johan Benvenuto, this pretty little nature game took 2024 by storm. It was included on the Spiel des Jahres Recommended list, and captured many minds and hearts with its chunky, river-rock-esque pieces and winsome box.

But that’s all superficial. What’s really going on with Harmonies? What’s the big deal here?

Dan: At first glance, I can honestly say I didn’t think it had all that much to it. I’m as much a sucker for pretty games as anybody else, and all those stacked discs, not to mention Maëva da Silva’s illustrations, were enough to catch my eye.

And, look, my first impressions were wrong. I’ll state that up front. But even if they weren’t and all Harmonies managed to be is a looker, dang, what a looker it is. I’ve always had a thing for board games that let me both create and explore a space, and that’s exactly what’s going on here. The topography of this little landscape is just so wonderful to assemble, to fill with cubes, to look over once you’re finished. I think the secret ingredient is the way Benvenuto lets you play with elevation and density. To score the big points, trees need to grow tall, meadows are flat but require real acreage, and mountains should ideally be both tall and broad. So you wind up with these little river valleys winding between mountains and meadows, or a lone tree near some little village, or these marshy islands.

I haven’t even mentioned the animals yet! But that’s the thing about Harmonies. Even if it didn’t have all those extra considerations, it would be so pleasant to look at and shape with your fingers.

How about for you?

Picking discs.

Brock: It’s a lovely sight, and we wouldn’t be the first pair of lads to be enraptured by a pretty face (belonging to a happy otter) alongside some chunky wooden pieces. But I’m happy to report that the beauty of Harmonies extends from its foothills to its loftiest treetops.

Taken only as its initial conceit, it would be a fine use of one’s time. Players take it in turns to draft pieces of landscape, adding water, mountains, or other details to their own board, with each variety restricted and scored by its own rules. Your world expands out and up, developing texture, color, personality. And if this was the extent of the design, you would still end up with a nice time and a bit of pleasant scenery. It would be a trifle thin, but the wooden pieces are thick enough to balance out such complaints, like that Jack Sprat fellow.

But the animals, Dan! You’ve left me the juiciest bit, the morsel that takes Harmonies from a snack to a meal. Or, perhaps, takes us from the chaos of an orchestra tuning their instruments to a symphonic performance.

Dan: I’m generous like that. Like a symphonic performance. Exactly.

Brock: The animal cards are gorgeous, and the art is given extra real estate on tarot-size cards, so you can drink deep of the colors and expression in each creature. Be it a tiny bumblebee, an elusive fox, or a lumbering bear, each drawing immerses the player in the natural world. We glimpse true unity, realizing that we are but a part of a larger life force. The players around the table are building their own landscapes, but aren’t we all part of one shared world?

Also, I guess there are more rules about getting points from the cards…

Populating the wilds.

Dan: There are rules indeed, and points besides, but I think Harmonies sidesteps the usual point-salad problem that dogs this genre’s heels. It’s true that there’s a whole list of ways to earn points, but each category fits into the grander whole.

Literally, in fact. When it comes to animal cards, your objective is to move cubes from their card to your board. But this requires you to prepare special habitats. Sometimes these are simple, like meerkats who want to occupy rocky ground near a meadow. That’s easy! One mountain piece surrounded by some meadows will be enough to place all four of that card’s cubes. Who ever said it was hard being a god?

But others are tougher. Timberwolves also like being near meadows, but their actual dwelling place is a tall stand of trees. That will require more careful construction. Some creatures, like hares or field mice, appreciate living around humans. But where the mice live right under the floorboards, hares require nearby bushes to hide in.

This means players are working in multiple directions at the same time. You’re playing reactively, taking whichever terrain discs are available, but also planning three or four moves in advance to maximize the points from your landscape and safekeep as many species as possible. It’s truly marvelous, feeling both deliberate and organic at the same time. You quickly learn, for instance, that variation is your friend. Because while it might sound amusing to cross-populate your abundant grassland with raccoons, crows, and panthers, you won’t have enough room for everyone.

Brock: Right, that’s the bit I missed! Those snow monkeys and alpacas are just so nice to look at.

These animals add texture and strategy to the puzzle at the heart of Harmonies. They simultaneously constrain and inspire, hedging your efforts on one front and allowing for inspired play on another. And they look damn good while doing it.

But we’ve come this far; we’d be foolish not to add the game’s final element, the Nature Spirits. They are cards similar to the animals you’ll welcome into your environment, with a divine wrinkle as delicious as any raisin. Actually, I’ll just say it: it’s more delicious than raisins.

With the Nature Spirit option, each player is given a choice of animal deity at the outset of the game. When you configure your landscape in the right way to attract an animal spirit, you add another way a specific terrain type scores. For example, the dragonfly spirit — long may she flit — wants multiple tiny ponds, rather than sprawling rivers. And she will reward you handsomely for nurturing her tiny, terrible disciples.

Nature Spirits add yet another layer of dilemma to the proceedings. Their demands might shape your board into awkward configurations, and require several turns’ worth of hoping for just the right offerings to show up. Appeasing your deity may leave you feeling like Job, forsaken by his friends and appealing to the silent heavens.

Or not. Probably not, if I’m being honest.

Check out my inlet.

Dan: I get more of a Saint Francis feel, personally. The whole thing is so wholesome and inviting. Which brings me back around to what I was saying earlier about eating humble pie. Because Harmonies looks nice, but it’s also nice on the inside. It feels good on the fingertips. Placing those discs, seeing this landscape take shape, filling it with creatures. They’re only cubes, but the parameters behind their placement are so specific, the illustrations on the cards so pleasing, that it hardly matters.

I guess I ought to ask if there’s anything you dislike about this game? I don’t really have anything. There’s the part of me that wouldn’t mind new boards. The game comes with two, riverlands and islands, and it’s impressive how Benvenuto permits two distinct approaches with only a single minor change to how water tiles operate. So maybe another couple of boards. Even then, the game is such this perfectly preserved artifact that I’m fighting against my maximalist instincts. Adding more might tip the ecosystem out of balance.

Brock: I’m not sure I can think of a single thing to dislike. If I’m pressed, it’s probably connected to a larger concern I have about the hobby. I love seeing games about nature. Enthusiasm for conservation and rewilding is on the rise, and that’s great. And I want that passion to translate into practice. I want to see sustainability in the hobby, and I think it’s possible.

Harmonies should be an inspiration, I guess, in more ways than one. It’s one I’m happy to have in my collection. And even if it’s not as exciting to read about, I’m glad we agree that it’s beautiful inside and out.

A complete tableau.

Brock: Anything else to add? Any killer combos that need to be nerfed with an errata?

Dan: Ladybugs are OP.

(If what I’m doing at Space-Biff! is valuable to you in some way, please consider dropping by my Patreon campaign or Ko-fi. Right now, supporters can read big stonking essays on the movies and video games I experienced in 2024.)