Structure & gameplay
HarmonyBot 6000 is a narrative-driven puzzle game. In the game, you play as HB6K, a social-emotional support module on the computer of the spaceship Transcendent. Gameplay revolves around visual-novel-style interactions with the crew, and puzzle play inspired by the Flow Free game series, which popularized numberlink puzzles. HB6K exists in order to solve these numberlink puzzles, in order to help this kind of outer-space family unit find their way through their various challenges as a cohesive group.
Flow Free also influenced the art style of the game, with its focus on colorful shapes set against the black void of space. As with a lot of animated storytelling, Harmonybot 6000 uses color and shape language to help express the different personalities of the characters, and to tie them to their representations on the numberlink board.
There’s an indie game called I Was a Teenage Exocolonist, and it does a really good job of telling this coming-of-age story. And part of how it manages to do that is by showing characters over a long period of time with these little sort of snapshot scenes, like just a few scenes every season or year, but you get this emerging picture of the relationships that are forming and how the characters are growing and changing.
I see Harmonybot 6000 doing something similar, where these numberlink puzzles are these kind of meaningful moments in the crew’s life together over time, of navigating conflicts, navigating things that the crew are seeking and hoping for. You don’t have to show every moment of what’s happening, you can kind of dip into these scenes that then allow you to stitch together a much bigger picture and tell a much longer story.
Part of gameplay can be HB6K talking to the members of the crew to learn what it is that they’re wanting out of a given situation and assembling the board, using that information to create their simulation: a model of what the interpersonal situation is–the puzzle that they’re going to solve.
Something that I found so interesting imagining these sort of deconstructed and subverted numberlink puzzles is, here’s this person, here’s where they want to go, here’s this goal or this need or this want, and then you’re looking at, okay, how do all of these people, how do they all get that thing? How do each of them find their way towards that thing that is important to them without getting into each other’s way without it being this zero-sum game?
The character of HB6K, that’s their super-power: to look at the situation and be able to make sense of what people care about, what people want, and to see the ways in which there isn’t actually conflict, even where there may seem to be conflict.
Exploring themes of enmeshment
The Transcendent’s crew is like a kind of family, and I’m using them to lightly explore themes of enmeshment. Enmeshment is a situation where, instead of each person in a group being a whole and complete individual onto themselves, there’s this codependency. Each person gets to really focus on a certain role, and that role is reinforced by the rest of the group. There are parts of themselves that they are no longer able to access so well, and those parts get projected onto other people in the group. And often people taking on a role like that see that role as the fullness of who they are, they don’t necessarily realize that they’re inhabiting a much smaller piece of themselves.
In the best possible world, I see numberlink puzzles as these beautiful representations of a group of people who are supporting each other and enabling each other to each go after the thing that they care about the most, their deepest values, their deepest instincts, their deepest selves, and really fully express that, and they find a way to do it together. But the dark side of that is this enmeshment, and this situation in which all of these people are fitting together into a cohesive whole because each of them is only allowed to be a small part of themselves in order to fit that larger group.
So if you imagine a full, complete person who is whole and has good boundaries, one way that you can look at this is a person who is:
- having a good working relationship with their mind and their thoughts,
- having a good working relationship with their emotions, and
- having a good working relationship with their body.
Mind, emotions, and body come together and you get this overlap in the middle of feeling complete within yourself, and even in times of hardship, having that deep self-connection to draw on. So in the crew of the Transcendent, because it’s an enmeshed system, people don’t have that kind of wholeness as individuals. Instead, these roles are split up among the people in the group.
Characters: Capt. Alwin Auric
The Captain, Professor Alwin Auric , is symbolized by the color yellow and is connected with this idea of mind and ego. He has a very strong sense of personality, he has a very strong sense of who he is and what this entire crew should be doing. He’s the captain, he is a scientist and a diplomat, and he is the one that everybody looks to to determine what is good and valuable and what is not. And he loves that role. He is sort of an absent-minded professor type, but he sees himself as very much a space hero. He wants to explore, he wants to find the clever paths towards a better world. And he thinks that the way to do that is through science and the type of thinking that he is so good at. The professor is excited about force of will and beautiful ideals that are almost just separated and divorced from reality. So the professor loves numberlink puzzles. He’s the one who most wants to see a beautiful, classic, standard solution to a numberlink puzzle that fills all of the squares and connects all of the dots. Captain Auric is also the one who’s most able to teach how to solve numberlink puzzles within the story of the game. An interesting strategy for solving very large numberlink puzzles involves drawing lines on the board that don’t connect to any dots at all. And that feels like something that really fits with Professor Auric’s character. I could see him teaching this to Harmonybot and saying, “Hey, you’re thinking too much about the people involved in this situation. Maybe approach this puzzle a little bit more abstractly—take this to an even more theoretical level.”
Characters: FO Rudi Saint-Britto
First Officer Rudi Saint-Britto is the second member of the crew. She is symbolized by the color red, and she’s connected with the idea of the body. She is a person who gets things done. So she’s a great counterpoint to the professor’s idealism. She’s the one who tries to bring those ideals down into reality. And so she’s a very powerful person, but at the same time, she’s the one who gets to tangle with that tension between what is theoretically imagined and what is actually possible in a real world with real world limitations.
When it comes to the numberlink puzzles, First Officer Rudi introduces this challenge of resource management. The captain wants to see puzzle solutions that are beautiful, and Rudi just wants the puzzle to get solved however it can get solved. So Rudi is the one who is asking the question of, “Why are we using all these squares? Can we afford to use all these squares?”
“Oh hey, these two points are right next to each other. Why do they have to wrap all the way around like this? Could we just connect them?”
“If people are having to go this far and use this many squares, maybe it’s not meant to be.”
Even for somebody with the tremendous force of will, real world limitations can’t be ignored and bypassed forever. So narratively, in the story, the player is going to encounter situations where they are having to work much more closely with Rudi and be like, “Okay, okay, what can we connect? What can’t we connect? How can we do this in the best way possible?” Like, “What is essential for us to do and what can we put to the wayside?”
One of Rudi’s core powers is called Compromise, and it enables the player to take any one end point on the grid and move it one square. This can have a huge impact on what is possible. Rudi also has a skill called Salvage, which allows the player to gain some kind of resource for every square that remains empty at the resolution of a puzzle.
Professor Auric, his goals and Rudi’s goals may seem to be in conflict, but you can actually manipulate puzzles using Rudi’s skill of Compromise to make it so that you don’t use all the puzzle squares and yet you arrive at a solution that is pleasing to Auric as well.
Rudi is a producer.
Expanding the enmeshed system
Even with just a two-person starting crew, HB6K is navigating a lot between helping them reconcile their very different sets of values and priorities and supporting them both as full individuals who are so much more than what their roles allow them to express.
Both the captain and the first officer see emotions as a bit of a problem and are very uncomfortable with emotions. Auric sees emotions as something that clouds the mind and makes people act in ways that are not rational. And to Rudi, emotions are something that can be overwhelming and draining. The enmeshed system of the crew doesn’t admit for emotions, there’s nobody in that role. Even though there’s this intellectual understanding that emotions are a fact of life and emotions are necessary and emotions are in some ways useful, there is this ability to kind of ignore emotions, kind of pretend that they don’t exist.
And so as the crew expands, it’s very natural that new people are going to get drafted into roles that do encompass emotions. In this kind of environment where emotions are seen as bad, that is going to color how these people are perceived, how they’re treated, and their own sense of self. So as the Transcendent is on its mission, the crew meets and interacts with various aliens along the way, and some of those aliens end up joining the crew.
Characters: Zurxia
The person who takes on this role of emotions is Zurxia , an alien refugee symbolized by the color blue, who is allowed to come and take refuge on the ship and escape their bad circumstances.
When Zurxia joins the crew, there is this vacuum, and so Zurxia falls into that role and is kind of almost a mouthpiece for the subconscious to speak through them, because that is something that’s present and not currently expressed through anybody. Because Zurxia is associated with emotions and takes on that role, people project emotions onto them, people project the power and responsibility of emotions in the system onto them.
So Zurxia is associated with insights, with meaning, with the real and valuable things that emotions do, but because the system is wary of and is unable to really work with emotions, stepping into this role is very fraught. Nobody likes it. This crew does not value emotions, this crew does not value that kind of insight. It’s seen as scary, it’s seen as overwhelming, it’s seen as dangerous.
So I’m representing that with Zurxia’s powers. They have these psionic electric powers that have the potential to cause malfunctions on the ship because it just overloads the systems, which is a sort of symbolic representation of how emotions are experienced by the people in this group. Zurxia is fundamentally good, is fundamentally performing an important role within the system, but there is a certain nervous system capacity aspect to being able to engage with your emotions in a way that is positive, to allow your emotions to move through your body and give you the information that they have to offer. So these psionic powers aren’t something that either of the existing crew members really appreciate or even are comfortable with. There’s a level of lack of understanding and there’s certainly a lack of valuing what it is that Zurxia is bringing to the table.
In this system where emotions are seen as not valuable, not worthy, not contributing, I had some challenge figuring out what Zurxia should do mechanically. I’m still working to imagine how Zurxia wants to contribute to the numberlink puzzles. I think there’s some really interesting possibilities there just because of the way that emotions work.
A way that I could see Zurxia contributing to the puzzles with this psionic power is by granting the player a way to know—without knowing how they know—whether a puzzle is completable in the standard beautiful way that is valued by the captain or not. That’s a way that I find emotions sometimes operate. They can point you towards something important without you working through all the logical steps of why it’s important.
In certain custom puzzles, I could see Zurxia doing something really interesting where they are able to in some fundamental way change the nature of the puzzle itself. For example, I think of the New York Times puzzle game Strands and how Strands basically involves connecting items on a grid in a way that is very similar to numberlink puzzles. I could see Zurxia doing a really interesting thing in some puzzles where they can take a numberlink puzzle and flip it over into being a word puzzle and instead of just drawing lines on the grid and connecting these dots, maybe you’re drawing these lines that trace words that highlight what a person is really deeply seeking in this situation.
Characters: Callow
Callow is another alien that comes on board. He is represented by the color green, and at this point the roles of mind, body, and emotions have all been filled so there isn’t a lot left in terms of that kind of major central featured role. So Callow takes on a kind of mixed role where he has a lot of access to both mind and emotions. In a system like this where emotions are seen as a problem, it kind of translates into a more stressed variation of the captain’s mind role.
So Callow has a lot in common with Captain Auric, but he isn’t as concerned with this kind of intellectual theoretical purity. He’s a little bit more connected with his emotions and the thing that characterizes him most is his separation from body. So I see Callow as being associated less with a clear role and more with these very mental and very disembodied strategies and tactics to work within the system.
So having less of a connection to the body and to the physical means that he’s able to be very selective in where he’s putting his attention and kind of ignore the things that he doesn’t want to see or respond to. He’s using humor. He has these tendencies towards people pleasing and having almost a little bit of a chameleon-like ability to change how he is embodying in a certain situation. Not having good access to body can make a person a little spacey and he may not have a good feel for things. There could be an element of numbness or some difficulty really connecting with other people’s points of view in more than a surface level way. He is potentially being able to navigate that very nimbly but is having trouble really getting down below the surface to that more deep like body-based feeling of it just because he’s not connected in that way even within himself. At the same time, he’s able to kind of move outside of some of the constraints of the real world. He’s able to lean into a bit of escapism or just not being reactive to some things that really impact other people.
Mechanically, I’m expressing this kind of tendency that Callow has by connecting him with this dimensional phase-shifting power. Callow is an alien that is able to jump between dimensions. He’s kind of here in this dimension with the rest of the shipmates but also he doesn’t have to be. He can just flip over into some other space and not deal with problems that arise and not contribute to problems that arise.
One way that I’m exploring this in the numberlinks is giving Callow the ability to just remove himself. Just take his dots off and create more space for everybody else. That is mechanically very powerful and very helpful when it comes to solving the puzzles but it has the potential to have some narrative impacts and some impacts on your relationship and some impacts on Callow himself.
Characters: Violaceous (aka “Lacey”)
The last member who joins the crew is Violaceous , who goes by Lacey. Lacey is associated with the color purple and takes on, again, not one of these primary roles but this kind of mixed role of body and emotions. The thing that they are lacking as much access to or not as closely connected with is mind and ego.
What this looks like is somebody who has really good instincts is really connected with their authentic self and can sort of move through the world in a way that isn’t as self-conscious, is not thinking about how they’re being perceived or thinking about how they ought to be. Some things that are potentially challenging about that is they might be quick to act, they might act without thinking, and they might act on impulse or instinct or emotion and in a situation where emotions are seen as so dangerous and so suspect, that can cause problems.
Because Lacey is the one person in this system who takes emotions which are so difficult and so fraught for everybody and pairs them with the powers and the abilities of the body, which is to make things real and concrete and impactful in the world, Lacey is a real particular challenge for the people of this group. Where Zurxia is fully embodying emotions, and those emotions are just kind of ungrounded and present in a way that the people around them can’t really handle, Lacey is engaged with emotions a little bit differently. Zurxia is in this position of being a refugee and not having as much immediate control or power within this group. Lacey is able to almost wield emotion and make it something that the other people in the group can’t ignore and can’t dismiss. Lacey is able to say, “I’m having these emotions and it’s not just my problem, it is now also your problem.”
I’m representing that mechanically by giving Lacey these force wave powers. On the numberlink board, that looks like pushing the boundaries of the board and changing the actual space of the board. Lacey is the person in the system who is most connected to their own boundaries and so another mechanic that I’m associating with Lacey is the ability to say, “Hey, my line is going longer and wrapping around more than anybody else’s. Why is that? That’s not cool with me, change it.”
So these two powers go together well because Lacey can be the one who’s going to say, “I’m not going to go around you, I’m not going to be the one who wraps all around the board in order to make things work for everybody else. But here, I’m going to push the side of the board out…”—wham—“Okay, now you go around me.”
Characters: HB6K
Finally, there’s the player character, HB6K . HB6K is a social emotional support module. They’re an artificial consciousness that can be anyplace in the ship. They’re like a robot, but instead of having a robot body, if anything you could say that their body is the ship of the Transcendent itself.
They see themselves as a member of the crew and they have meaningful relationships with the other members of the crew, but HB6K in some ways doesn’t see themselves as a person. They’re the one solving the numberlink puzzle, they’re not represented in the numberlink puzzle.
I see there being a very interesting turning point in the story where HB6K is removed from this enmeshed system of the crew of the Transcendent and for the first time starts to encounter situations in which people expect them to have their own goals, their own wants and desires—to be a person at the same level as the people who do get represented on the numberlink board.
And for HB6K, who derives so much of their sense of self and sense of power in the world from being the one who solves these numberlink puzzles, that is a very strange turn of events. Having to place their own dots on the board is a real shift in perspective. It requires them to start to look at themselves in a different way and at first, their response is to place their dots on the board wherever they need to be in order to make the puzzle solvable for everybody.
HB6K doesn’t have the awareness or the tools to identify where they would put their dots from an authentic self-driven place, they just don’t look at the world that way. They’re unaccustomed to touching in with their own sense of self or desires. Their most easily recognized desire is for everybody to get along and for everybody to get what they want.
So I see HB6K’s story as extending beyond their time with the crew of the Transcendent, but being a part of the Transcendent’s crew sets the tone and sets just all of this foundational understanding of who HB6K is and why they come at the world in the way that they do. The story of HB6K is the story of how somebody like that learns to become a person in their own right.