Harmonies got compared to Azul and Cascadia so often before I played it that I went in expecting a pleasant but familiar remix, and it turned out sharper than either of those comparisons suggested. You’re placing little stacked domes to build a landscape, and the scoring cards you draft alongside that push you toward specific habitats and animal placements, which sounds gentle and turns out to demand real forward planning once you’re past your first couple of games. The tension between “build something beautiful” and “build something that actually scores” is the whole engine, and it’s a better engine than the calm production values let on.
The illustrations deserve the praise they get, this is genuinely one of the prettiest things on my shelf, and I’ve had guests who don’t normally care about board game art stop and comment on it unprompted. It pairs well with a slower kind of evening, I’ve played it on rainy afternoons with tea going and it fits that mood better than almost anything else I own. Clever placement rewards real attention without punishing a newer player too hard for a suboptimal turn, which makes it an easy one to teach.
My only real wish, echoed by more than one person I’ve played with, is a solo mode with some structure to it, something closer to what Cascadia offers for a night alone with the box. As a multiplayer table game it’s close to complete already. Four stars, gorgeous, replayable, and one of the few games in this weight class that’s just as fun with three as it is with two.