this $30 shape-rotation training game will make your brain go brrrr in beautiful ways
It's on sale for Black Friday
This Black Friday one of my favorite board games is on sale. It is called Harmonies.
How do I describe this game? It is so beautiful. It makes your brain do beautiful cognitive movements the way that Magic the Gathering does, except its rules are easier to learn and it is less oppositional (you don’t kill your opponent, you just win) for those times when you don’t actually feel well enough to attack or defend anything but do want to move some pieces around strategically for a goal. It has some math involved and is shape-rotatey, but is beginner friendly. It is this shape-rotatey aspect that feels really nice to me in the brain.
Similar to Magic the Gathering, the cards are really pretty.
What’s the gameplay like? Imagine one of those games in which you build up a war arsenal and have to build a bigger one than your opponent. When your board is all filled up, you count who has the most and biggest weapons and whoever has the most points wins.
Those games never really interested me because I was never really interested in investing math-brain-points into this setup of winning a fake war. I find that Harmonies is a more pleasant version of that motif that I am willing to spend considerably more time on, because you are building a fake zoo.
In this game you get a piece of land of the same size and shape as your competitor, and you have to make an ecosystem with animals and resources. The animals have habitat requirements, and it is a requirements optimization shape rotation game. There is an element of planning, but also an element of chance (which resource selections and animal options come up), and so you don’t get into a perfectionist mindset or beat yourself up too much the way you might in another game (like chess).
The animals have resources that they can live on, such as near a river, or near a plain and a tree. These resources have to be arranged in a specific shape. Your goal is to add these resources onto your board on each turn in such a way to add the animal cubes, so that by the end of the game you have the most animals living on your land.
Instead of building the largest war arsenal, you are building the largest and most diverse animal sanctuary. Yes, it is really wholesome and cute.
The animals can share resources, but only up to a point depending on the shapes of the resources, and only if you are strategic about arranging them right. That’s what the challenge is.
There is a one player version too, so that you can practice and beat your previous score.
It has beautiful components, look.
I find it to be a very meditative game. When I am not sure what to do with myself, but want to use my brain more than playing a video game or working on a jigsaw puzzle, it is really nice to have around. There was a period when I would travel with it when going on trips and play the one-player version at night.
It’s also a nice game to have around for when you are not in a heart space to feel like playing or practicing a musical instrument yet, but want to get yourself into a better mood to do more emotional activities like that.
If you are feeling just very blank for some reason (maybe you are heartbroken, or got fired, or are grieving, or through a series of events are just worn down from tormenting yourself for a long time), it is a nice alternative to staring at a wall, your brain sort of flickering randomly.
This game lets your brain flicker around in a variety of organized shapes, and in the service of helping little animals live.
I consider this game one of my antidotes to despair that I like to have around. I give it as a gift to people. It’s also nice because people of different ages can all play it together and it works out well.
People who are frustrated with math can use it as benign and gentle exposure therapy around their math frustrations, and people who are extremely good at math still have enough going on inside of the game that they can practice much more advanced skills.
As my friend put it, “it’s easy to start playing right away, and easy to get better, but it is hard to play any one round mathematically optimally.”
If you want to get better at shape-rotation or are filling your house with antidotes for despair for yourself, your family, or your friends, I highly recommend this.