Harmonium: The Musical Offers a Narrative Journey Inspired by Sign Language

Restart checked out more than two dozen games at Summer Game Fest, ranging from the relaxing creature collection game Flock to the fast-paced team shooter FragPunk. The most unique title of the bunch, however, wound up being Harmonium: The Musical, a beautiful adventure game from The Odd Gentlemen, co-created and written by husband and wife team Matt and Kay Daigle.

Harmonium: The Musical follows 10-year-old Deaf Filipina-American musician Melody Macato, who is anxious about her upcoming concert and doesn’t really understand how she fits in the world of music.

Through her imagination, Melody embarks on a magical journey into the world of Harmonium inside her music book, where she’ll be challenged to face Cacophony, an entity described on The Odd Gentlemen website as “an all-consuming force who can only be defeated with a masterpiece symphony.”

The world of Harmonium features lots of clever musical touches, such as stepping stones shaped like piano keys that play music when Melody walks over them. In this unique world, Melody will meet a winged creature named Harper who will join her on her journey.

A brown and green winged creature with a design inspired by a harp — Harper in Harmonium: The Musical
©The Odd Gentlemen

Throughout the pair’s adventure, players will be asked to observe sign language and other forms of non-verbal communication before taking actions. For instance, in the Summer Game Fest demo, Melody and Harper found themselves separated and challenged to solve a puzzle to unlock the way forward. A segmented, rotating statue was in Melody’s room and the clues related to solving the puzzle were in Harper’s room. We needed to observe Harper’s non-verbal descriptions of each segment of the statue’s design (like its head and chest) in order to know how to rotate the statue’s parts and solve the puzzle.

Making games that are accessible to everyone is one of The Odd Gentlemen’s core principles, so it’s no surprise Harmonium will feature a wide variety of accessibility options, including everything from subtitle controls to button remapping and beyond. Check out the game’s full list of accessibility features here.