Articles - Harmony's Odyssey

What inspires our team?

We are greatly inspired and influenced by animations and cartoons that bridge the gap between generations - productions of Studio Ghibli or Pixar always stood out for us, thanks to the multigenerational approach and their clever winks and frowns thrown at viewers. This type of content stood the test of time and still carries valuable lessons, regardless of people’s ethnicity, spoken language or age.

Since most of us were born in the mighty 1980s, we do remember lots of great ‘off-line’ entertainment - solving jigsaws, playing cards, chess & checkers, all the great board games like Mastermind or if you were a slick handed player - pick-up-sticks. Great thing about all these ‘party games’ is that families, friends and whole communities bonded over very simple ideas that are still here - we just want to make them more interactive and fun on the digital channels.

How about video games? We tip our hats to studios behind Into The Breach or the Civilization series as well as offline puzzle games. They are all bringing tile-based gameplay to a next level and somehow pave the way for creators that want to follow this route. We also really enjoy deck-builders like Wingspan, that bring original and friendly themes - expanding players knowledge about certain things.

What is our approach really about?

We could sum up our approach to making video games in the points below:

1. Pleasant, relaxing themes
2. Brain engaging which allows to enter the flow state
3. Accessibility
4. No language barrier
5. Can be played together with a younger one
6. Focus on value, rather than exploiting players time
   
   

Sounds nice? Let’s briefly expand on all these points. Firstly, we want our games to have a pleasant, relaxing atmosphere. The idea is to relax yourself and enjoy the moment, rather than being constantly anxious about not having time or money to dive into everchanging meta or microtransactions. You want to simply have fun, maybe learn some new skills and we hear you loud and clear.

Are our games accessible? In Hexologic or our dot-connecting puzzler One Line Coloring, the idea was to play almost effortlessly - whether it’s the gamepad, mouse & keyboard or a touchpad in your laptop - we want players to focus on finding the solution and enjoying all the riddles, rather than becoming a champion in who presses spacebar more times under one minute. The Control scheme in Hexologic is super easy to learn - you can even play it on Apple TV’s remote. We are always thinking of new ways of utilising the platform's advantages - touchscreens, gyro, you name it.

Comment ça va? Wie geht’s? We hope you’re doing ok and even if you didn’t understand these exotics at the beginning - don’t worry. We get that learning a foreign language is a tough cookie and players all around the world want their content to be localised. Our games rarely utilise written language as we want them to be understood without any words.

So you are 6 years old bugging your parents for a new video game? Or maybe you are a parent that is constantly worried about what their children play and don’t want them to engage in some shady lootbox-fueled, totally-time-consuming blockbusters? Or this parent is your child and you’re 68, sitting in your chair, looking for an entrance into this crazy world of games? We believe that everyone, regardless of their age should be able to enjoy easy to learn, yet fun and meaningful games.

Last but not least and for sure something we want to preserve and expect others to respect - our time. You don’t really have +100 hours to put into another open world game? Welcome to the club! Now even if you did, think about all other stuff you can do with your precious 100 hours. You can think of a new business plan to turn your life around. You can learn a new, valuable skill and have a fraction of this ‘lifetime’ invested in a time-well-spent entertainment. No guilt about staying up until 4:00 AM with a college semester test right around the corner.

What puzzles can we expect in Harmony’s Odyssey?

Our upcoming wholesome adventure puzzle game is greatly influenced by all the things above and follows this direction. Gameplay revolves around tile-based isometric and facade dioramas that players need to solve by changing tiles’ positions, based on interactive elements placed on the tiles and their surroundings. Our initial plan was to focus solely on solving dioramas, however the idea evolved into expanding this main loop into something more - a puzzle hub filled with engaging action/adventure mini games that enrich players' experience and are seamlessly connected to dioramas. Currently, Harmony’s Odyssey offers:

• isometric dioramas puzzles (horizontal)
• facade dioramas puzzles (vertical)
• spot-the difference mini game
• memorize objects mini game
• catch the delivery mini game
• get the cheese mini game (inspired by PacMan)

We have at least 3 more mini game ideas that slowly take shape in our mythical oven and will let our community know about the ones that will make the final cut soon. The plan is to further improve level design, balance and overall experience, making every type of puzzle a logical extension of the main, tile-based gameplay.

Phew, that was a long one! If you’re still here, we are delighted and truly happy that our upcoming game and its promise stuck with you. This means, you’re probably interested in what we’re cooking and we would be more than happy to have you onboard. As always we encourage everyone to wishlist our game that you can find here: Store.steampowered.com

Thanks for your attention, IndieDB readers!

Your friendly neighborhood puzzle games maker,
MythicOwl

Hi everyone!

Welcome to our newest community announcement, in which we break down Detective Mummy - one of the most popular mini games available in Harmony's Odyssey! Mini games play a huge part in our cozy puzzler and are unlocked along the way while solving regular dioramas.

What is it about?

You are the mythical private investigator with a mission to find hidden objects on a set of detailed dioramas filled with treasures. Starting off the inspection, you need to be observant and carfeul! 🕵️

Rules are quite simple:

1. Find the highlighted object hidden somewhere on the diorama
2. Watch out for fails (misclicks) as they are limited, depending on the selected difficulty level:

Easy mode: No limits to fails
Medium: Up to 3 fails
Hard: No fails available

One of the main objectives we had with designing these riddles, was to make each level replayable with objects in rotation. If you have 6 objects to find, you can be sure that once you replay the level, objects to find will rotate, meaning players will be served with a different set of treasures to find!

That's it, that's all. Just remember - not all objects are as easy to spot as the radio above! 📻

Multiplayer modes

Detective Mummy - like most of the mini games presented in Harmony's Odyssey - is fully playable in a local multiplayer mode. Invite a friend to help you with finding objects - or rival eachother and see who finds these hidden treasures faster!

Here are couple screenshots of a co-op/versus modes:

While investigating and looking for treasures in the multiplayer mode, you can compete with second player on who find all objects faster, or work together. Depending on the selected difficulty level, rules change a bit, adding cooldowns and other interesting features.

And it's a wrap! Detective Mummy is just one of the mini games you will find in Harmony's Odyssey so make sure to wishlist & follow our upcoming cozy adventure puzzler to stay updated with next announcements 👇

Store.steampowered.com

We are always delighted to chat with you on our Discord channel and see your feedback posted there or on the official Steam Discussions section 👇

Discord: Discord.gg
Steam Discussions: Steamcommunity.com

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So what's new in the newest demo? Lets go through new features and content:

New Difficulty Modes
Watching you play and experience our wholesome puzzler during EGX gaves us priceless feedback on how you play, what you enjoy the most and what kind of puzzles are most challenging and engaging. For the first time, we are introducing difficulty modes - Easy, Medium and Hard - so that more experienced players get a more challenging experience, while puzzle newbies and players not acquainted with genre get a pleasant onboarding.



New Mini Games - Spot & Memorize Objects
While tile-based gameplay remains the heart of Harmony's Odyssey, we are still improving existing mini games & adding more outstanding types. We are greatly influenced by riddles and offline puzzle games from our past - Rubik's cubes, memorization and spot-the-difference games available in old paper magazines from our youth. Two new mini games available in this new demo are just about that with one exception - a photo is now a living fantasy diorama filled with treasures to find and puzzles to solve.



Harmony is here!
We added Harmony to appear in certain levels and react to players actions and the way he is solving a level. She would frown or smile and react in different ways accordingly and is surely helpful if you get stuck in this tangled, fantastic world!



Gameplay changes and quality of life tweaks
We are constantly working on level design in our action adventure mini games - Cats Delivery Service and Dragonmice Dungeons. The idea is to make the gameplay challenging but at the same time we want to present players with different types of traversal, collecting treasures and discovering new ways to better your records. One of the new tweaks is the rediscovered bascule bridge presented below:



Improving the overall experience and making gameplay pleasant, relaxing and as enjoyable as possible is the ultimate goal for us. Harmony's Odyssey features rich, colorful dioramas and one of the newest additions are.. curtains! That's right - now each completed level is accompanied by possibly one of the cutest animations of all time - a dragonmice together with his bat-bud dragging these red Hollywood-like curtains! Check it out here:



Full v3.0 demo patch updates:

• Two new mini games: Spot Objects and Memorize Objects
• New difficulty modes: Each level will now be playable on Easy, Medium and Hard
• New tile type: Locked tiles that are placed correctly from the start and impossible to swap
• Introducing traps to Dragonmice Dungeons Mini Game
• Improved visuals, outline and tile animations
• Improved tile presentation and visuals that no longer impact colors that much
• Added HDR support
• New UI for more advanced scenarios in Cat's Delivery Service mini game
• Improved UI to showcase new difficulty settings
• Cutscene icon added after the level is completed
• Added river transport and bascule bridge to Cat's Delivery Service mini game
• Harmony now reacts to some user actions while solving levels

Last but not least, we'd like to give you a glimpse of Harmony's Garden, another exciting feature that we showcase in details soon. It is yet another addition to Harmony's Home, that we revealed in one of the recent announcements. You can feel the earie evening atmosphere in the air..



That's it for now! As usual, best way to support our journey is to follow us on Steam here and of course add Harmony's Odyssey to your wishlists if by any chance you didn't ;)

Don't want to miss any news? Follow us here:
Harmony's Odyssey website: www.mythicowl.com
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