Lost in Harmony: A Story Told Without Words

When words fail, music can speak.

When words fail, music can speak. Getting lost in a song, falling into the rhythm and the harmonies – it’s easy to just relax, to feel. Music can respond in ways that words sometimes simply cannot. That is the driving force behind the newest game from Yoan Fanise. Fanise worked on Ubisoft’s well known, emotionally driven game, and is taking those emotions to the indie scene with his game Lost in Harmony , which was just announced today.

Lost in Harmony tells the moving story of Kaito and Aya using only music. Kaito is a young boy who is traveling the world on his skateboard while holding a girl named Aya. The game is a “music experience, a blend between narration, music, and gameplay,” Fanise writes. Players must help Kaito dodge obstacles while interacting with the musical elements that appear on-screen. Through the eyes of Kaito, players learn about the difficulties of being a teenager, the urge to escape, and the fears of life and death. The game is “fun and challenging to play” but also has something very important to say.

Fanise spent 14 years working for Ubisoft, staring back in 2001 where he worked on the soundscape for Beyond Good & Evil. Years later, he was co-inventing Raving Rabbids and their wacky language. After the success of many large title games with Ubisoft, he went on to release “one of the smallest, bravest games ever seen from a major publisher.” Valiant Hearts: The Great War is a game about emotions and story telling, a story about a war hero’s tragedy. This project was a revelation for Fanise, and led him to leaving Ubisoft in March of 2015 to create the Digixart Entertainment company, which is dedicated to meaningful and emotional games.

According to Fanise, Lost in Harmony “came from my past experience of blending music into storytelling. Magic happens when you see how, without any words, without any language form, you can provoke feelings into a multicultural audience by playing the right melody.”

Lost in Harmony will feature an original song written by Wyclef Jean, who has sold over 49 million records, “I wanted to write music that captured a moment in [Kaito’s] journey that was both mystical and brave, and that could emotionally inspire the multi-national world that is video gaming that that Kaito lives in.”

There are multiple, well-known composers working on Lost in Harmony , who will be announced at a future date. However, the art is just as important as the music. Lost in Harmony ’s art design is inspired by the work of Miyazaki and Kurosawa. Three rising French artists are helping bring together the world of Kaito and Ava: Kiko, Kad, and Paka.

Lost in Harmony will be available in 2016, but interested players can get lost in the music by following the developers on Twitter, hitting “like” on Facebook, and checking out the game’s website.