Harmonium hands-on preview – A Sign Language Musical of wonders!

When Harmonium was announced, I got so excited, as did our lead editor David Burdette. So when we found out that the game was being shown at Summer Game Fest in the Netflix tent, we had to try and get an appointment with the team. Thankfully, our friends at Netflix were able to get us one with them and it did not disappoint. Harmonium is going to be a musical feast for the senses.

Harmonium is an interactive sign language musical and adventure/narrative game. Music is visualized throughout the game, you’ll get to explore the lands of Harmonium using mechanics and narrative puzzles that incorporate American Sign Language (ASL) and the ability to communicate through body language, facial expressions, and gestures. The puzzles and vibes remind me of point and click style adventures and will be accessible to just about anyone.

My favorite part of meeting the team behind Harmonium is their passion for accessibility and inclusivity with their game. We had a great time discussing everyone’s different backgrounds including those in the deaf-community from all over the world to help shape the sign language in this game. They also have developers with many ethnic backgrounds which helped to shape the Filipina-American aspects of the character of Melody Macato, our main character. The team’s commitment to make sure they’re doing this right is clear and it shows in the gameplay.

From some of the developers of King’s Quest 2016, The Odd Gentleman, you can see the influence behind the animation of Harmonium. Especially in the Alice in Wonderland style lands of Harmonium. The art is such a cute style that fits not only the world, but the character of Melody as well. I got to see several sections of the game and each look as polished as the last with attention to detail on everything from the instruments being shown, to the hand and face motions during communication between the characters.

The gameplay is extremely simple, with most everything I played being able to be done with one finger. The simplified gameplay will make it easy for families to play together on an iPad like I did. One of my favorite levels I previewed was one where you had to communicate through a large plate of glass separating Melody from her friend. Since American Sign Language doesn’t translate to all other countries, the team decided to use that as the basis of communication between Melody and the characters from Harmonium. If there’s a word that doesn’t translate, they use the Harmonium Language which is using hand motions and facial expressions to describe what they’re looking at. For this level, we had to try and understand what a statue and its different parts looked like from the companion’s perspective to open the first door. Then we did the opposite, needing to describe what our statue looked like so the companion could match it on their side. Of all of these, I messed up one of the six, and realized quickly why I was confused. I was impressed by the creative and fun puzzles, none of which took too long and kept the story progressing.

We had a very short demo, so there’s not much more gameplay I can discuss, but the passion behind this game is very clear from talking to the team there at the preview event. I cannot wait to try the whole game when it arrives on Netflix Games and Xbox Gamepass.

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