Lost In Harmony [$3.99] is the latest game from Yoan Fanise, whose work at Ubisoft included directing Valiant Hearts [Free] and Rayman Raving Rabbids, along with sound design and audio direction on titles such as Beyond Good & Evil, Rabbids Go Home, and Assassin's Creed 3. With that kind of resume, it's perhaps not surprising that Lost In Harmony attempts to be an audio/visual spectacle, a heart-wrenching experience, and a unique hybrid of gameplay styles all at once. It succeeds completely on the first point and reasonably well on the second, but there are some definite issues that crop up with the third point. You can get a lot out of Lost In Harmony, but you're going to have to forgive a few things along the way.
The game follows the story of Kaito and Aya, a pair of teenaged friends who are forced to deal with one of the deadliest monsters reality has to offer. We get to see their words between stages, but it's the stages themselves that are most revealing about their relationship and how it progresses. It's a stage-based auto-runner, but instead of your character running into the screen, he's skateboarding out of it, like the chase sequences in the PlayStation 1 Crash Bandicoot games or, well, Valiant Hearts. It's also a rhythm game, and perhaps it's more of that than it is a runner. Obstacles are timed to go along with the music, and you'll occasionally have to tap or swipe marks that appear. One entire stage partway through the game is nothing but tapping and swi...