PETER HOSKIN reviews Harmony: The Fall of Reverie

Harmony: the fall of reverie

(PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £22.49)

Judgment: heavenly stories

Judgement:

You know what it’s like: one minute you’re just doing the dishes or feeding the cat, and the next you’re in a realm of dreams and abstraction, hanging out with luminous deities.

Or at least Polly knows what that’s like. Pretty soon in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, she is transported away from her life in a fictional Mediterranean city in the near future, where everyone lives under the rule of the technology company MK, and into this dimension called Reverie, where she is known as Harmony . As in the title.

Pretty soon in Harmony: The Fall of Reverie, she’s chased away from her life in a fictional Mediterranean town in the near future

From then on, Polly/Harmony always flutters between the two. Solving the mysterious disappearance of her artist-activist mother in the real world; solving the problems of the gods in the dream world. All of these things can be connected.

As for the gameplay, initially there isn’t really any. The story is told in the style of a visual novel, with beautiful animations punctuated by static screens of characters talking to each other. When you get to make choices, it seems much less ambitious than developer Don’t Nod’s other narrative games, such as the excellent Life is Strange series.

But soon you realize that Harmony is actually much more ambitious than its predecessors. The main trick is to make you see into the future, through a mystical flowchart known as the Augural, and make decisions accordingly. It turns from a simple pick-your-own-adventure game into a complicated exercise in anticipation, determination and, yes, loss, as entire branches of the story are systematically closed off to you.

Eventually you even play the gods against each other. It sure beats doing the dishes.

Railroad empire 2

(PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, PC, £44.99)

Verdict: All aboard!

Judgement:

Trains in real life: whatever.

Trains in games: wow, what wonderful machines these are!

Whatever it was that was awakened in me by last year’s Train Sim World 3 has been speeded up by Railway Empire 2, released a few weeks ago on PlayStation, Xbox and PC and this week on Nintendo’s Switch. I am now officially a virtual trainspotter.

In this case, the locomotives and carriages I am cooing about are the steam-powered ones from the 19th century. But it’s not just the trains that make Railway Empire 2 special; it’s also the sheer ballistic brilliance of the interface.

This is a game in which you have to build new railroads through – your choice – industrializing America or industrializing Europe. The continents are your canvas.

Trains in real life: whatever. Trains in games: wow, what wonderful machines these are!

It’s not just the trains that make Railway Empire 2 special; it’s also the sheer ballistic brilliance of the interface

But a single turn of a mouse wheel takes you from a satellite perspective to ground level, where passengers load their luggage and cattle moo in the fields.

It’s fast, seamless, and – while other management sims let you zoom in and out to a similar degree – arguably more impressive than anything else I’ve come across in gaming this year.

It also suits the gameplay. Railway Empire 2 is one of those titles where you have to make big, historical decisions like which states to connect, but also play around with smaller details like the grain levels in Bodie. If it wasn’t easy to switch between the two, the whole operation would be a bust.

Granted, it’s not perfect. There are times when the ease of use somehow breaks down – and you’re left cursing a piece of track that doesn’t obey the laws of physics, let alone sit upright.

But these are minor gripes, especially when Railway Empire 2 is so successful in other respects and so generous with its various gameplay modes. I know I’ll get back to it for the rest of this year – and beyond. Sorry, friends: my social calendar is now a train schedule.