With the time of year inching away from the frightful Halloween, Developer MythicOwl decided to release “Harmony’s Odyssey,” a game that does not provide scares but does deliver brain-twisting puzzles! “Harmony’s Odyssey” takes commonplace puzzles like jigsaw puzzles and spot-the-difference puzzles and makes them interestingly unique by placing them in 3-D environments! Unfortunately, despite the uniqueness of this game, “Harmony’s Odyssey” only features mildly intriguing gameplay with cumbersome mechanics and clunky graphics.
“Harmony’s Odyssey” does present a nice twist on classic puzzles by turning the typical 2-D picture of a jigsaw puzzle into a 3-D environment. It is surprisingly refreshing for a concept so tried and true as basic jigsaw puzzles, especially with the addition of quality-of-life features like rotating the entire puzzle and moving multiple pieces that fit together at once to make it a calm and relaxing experience.
The puzzles become even more intriguing when it sets up a minigame or another puzzle entirely in the 3-D puzzle you solve! Most of the worlds in “Harmony’s Odyssey” feature one of these minigames near the end, and it is a fantastic way to finish off a set of levels as it helps the player feel more engaged with the world that this game offers. However, most of these minigames are disappointingly shallow and tend to feature confusing gimmicks. Furthermore, they do not add enough to keep someone engaged with the main game, instead acting as a break from the endless jigsaw puzzles.
Thankfully, the game lets the minigames take the spotlight with the arcade mode! While the arcade does lack a ton of content, the new minigame levels and entirely new minigames breathe some much-needed life into “Harmony’s Odyssey.” These minigames even take full advantage of the 3-D environments, such as a spot-the-difference game where the differences hide behind objects. The arcade effortlessly provides the most enjoyable experience one can receive out of this game!
However, the presentation of the game is serviceable but feels rather clunky. While the music is pleasant to listen to, the 3-D graphics give the impression of some bizarre rip-off of “Roblox.” Additionally, the visuals do not add that much to the gameplay experience, instead making some of the puzzles somewhat harder since you cannot quite tell what fits together without placing them together. The puzzlesthemselves can get rather cumbersome when they get too complicated. Pieces you work with can be too similar to each other to the point that you cannot quite tell what goes where without just slapping pieces together. The mechanics can also work against you in some instances, as attempting to move multiple pieces at once tends to make a complete mess of the rest of the puzzle, which only gets worse the bigger and more complicated the puzzles get.
All in all, I give “Harmony’s Odyssey” a 5/10. If you are really in the mood for a quaint little puzzle game, you could do much worse than this.
