The Odd Gentlemen is no stranger to games with rich narratives blending fantasy and realism. Its previous projects includedThe Misadventures of P. B. Winterbottom,the 2015 re-imagining ofKing’s Quest,and more. Now, Odd Gentlemen is working onHarmonium: The Musical,which chronicles the adventures of a young Deaf performer as she learns to make her own kind of music.InHarmonium,protagonist Melody travels to the titular realm where music is presented visually, allowing her to connect with her inner creativity and design an accessible performance that blends sounds, sights, and a little bit of magic.
While attending Summer Game Fest, Game Rant played ademo ofHarmonium: The Musicaland spoke to creative director Matt Korba andHarmoniumco-writers Matt Daigle (via ASL translation) and Kay Daigle. The Daigles are co-creators of the webcomicThat Deaf Guy,which presents elements of Deaf culture in both an educational and humorous manner.Harmoniumis their first collaboration with The Odd Gentlemen and will be released at a currently unannounced date forNetflix Gamesand Game Pass. While speaking with Game Rant, the team discussed the process of creating Harmonium Sign Language, the game’s unique approach to audio, inspirations behind the character of Melody, and more.This transcript has been edited for clarity and brevity.
Q: Where did the idea forHarmonium: The Musicalcome from?
Korba:We make interactive narratives. We madeKing’s Quest.We’re really striving to become an interactive developer, so we had this idea of doing a musical. Then, we collaborated with Matt and Kay, who have a comic calledThat Deaf Guy.
It’s a story about a hearing wife and a Deaf husband, which is them, and it has a sort of similar sense of humor that I gravitated toward inKing’s Quest.We collaborated, and it’s been a crazy four-year journey of learning, rewriting, hiring a bunch of Deaf team members, and standing where we are now.
The goal of this project is to make it for everybody. An example is the movieCoco—it’s about Mexican culture, but it’s not for a particular type of person. Not when you’re talking about inviting people into that culture.
M. Daigle:I’m wondering if you’ve ever seen anyone using ASL? Do you know any American Sign Language?
I do not.
M. Daigle:You’ve seen interpreters working for maybe a famous actor on television or in a movie, something like that. We wanted to share our culture in a video game. This game is about a young lady named Melody, who was born into a famous family of musicians and, at age six, becomes Deaf. Her journey is to figure out how she fits into the hearing world as a Deaf musician.
Our culture is related to communication, solving communication barriers, using facial expressions to express ourselves; physical comedy as well. Like he said, we share a similar sense of humor. It’s a very family-friendly project as well.
Q: How would you define howHarmoniumapproaches Deaf culture? How is it shown in the game?
M. Daigle:When you play through the demo, you are playing from Melody’s POV. You’re seeing through Melody’s eyes: her journey, how she approaches the world, how she sees people, how she accesses information and communication, and how she experiences communication barriers.
There will be parts for you where you’ll getit when it starts to happen to you, as you play, when you approach the puzzles. It’s very visually based. You are going to be guessing, maybe, some of the hand shapes that are drawn in the air for you to figure out as thekey to the puzzle. As the game plays, you begin to stack these learnings, and you understand visually how the game goes.
Korba:It’s not aneducational game, it’s entertainment. You will pick up some stuff, as you do when you play anything. The goal is not to teach, it’s just to have fun.
One of the awesome parts about when I first started collaborating with Matt and Morgan, who is our Deaf designer, and Soren Bro Sparre, the Deaf animator we have, is that they came up with these puzzles that are like nothing I’ve ever seen in a game before. They use ASL to describe things visually that you may understand even if you don’t know sign language.
That’s kind of the key to how we bring people into it; the puzzles are actually all that mechanic. You watch and then try to parse information and then solve it like anescape room puzzle. That’s how we structure the puzzles, so not only accessibility features and narrative but the actual puzzles themselves have been very much inspired by Deaf culture and American Sign Language.
Designing Harmonium’s Audio And Puzzles
Q: Audio design in games is super important. How did you decide to approach audio inHarmonium?
Korba:Audiomakes it accessibleto a big audience as well. Whether it’s a low-vision player or maybe it just brings in someone who enjoys the music part, the key is making sure that it’s fun. We do that in a lot of different ways: obviously, subtitles are the basic way, but we also have animated subtitles in the game. When Melody is inside of Harmonium, music is visualized.
You’ll see an oscilloscope art piece or the way that the trees are moving—we always try to be visual. There are no pitch-matching puzzles or anything like that in the game. We approach the puzzles, we approach everything, from a visual first. If you want to do something with music, great, but it has to be interesting visually, too. It has to be completely playable and fun with no sound.
Creating Harmonium Sign Language
Q: Could you talk a bit about the creation of Harmonium Sign Language?
M. Daigle:First, ASL isAmerican Sign Languageand not universal. People think that sign language is universal; it is, however, not. Many other countries have their own sign languages. One of our animators, Sparre, is from Denmark, so he uses Danish Sign Language. With his Danish Sign Language, some ASL, the creative mind, and the change of some hand shapes, we’ve created Harmonium Sign Language.
HSL is for those who are learning but maybe don’t know sign language. Deaf people certainly haven’t seen Harmonium Sign Language, so they’ll be learning as well. There’s something for everyone, and it’s kind of Harper’s job to try and teach about the culture of Harmonium. This, again, is not an educational game. It’s just imparting information about the culture and about how to use manual language. It’s a fun, creative journey.
Korba:It was also inspired by Matt and Kay visiting France, right?
K. Daigle:Yeah. When we were visitingFrance, we met several Deaf people there, and none of us could communicate with each other because we knew ASL and they knew French Sign Language and Belgian Sign Language. We basically did this nonverbal communication that was just a collaboration of all of our understanding.
A lot of shapes, a lot of modification. We’d see them sign something and then point—so a lot of nonverbal communication. We wanted to incorporate that into the game. We realized that we were able to do that, that anybody could open their mind to taking in language visually rather than audibly.
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