Difficulty:

Just Right

Time Spent:

10 Hours or Less

The Bottom Line:

"All flash, no substance"

Halfbrick Echoes, an indie-game by Halfbrick Studios, starts with a unique and engaging premise but fizzles upon execution.

In Halbrick Echoes, the premise is that the journey you take will be replicated (or echoed/ghosted) after you complete it. Sounds interesting right? Well, it is to the extent that, in this game, if you run into one of your echoes, you'll eventually die. Also interesting.

Here's the problem. In each level (which are all designed in the shape of some random images, say light a musical note, guitar, or some such thing) there are a set of locations which you must travel to. Since each level is quite small and there are a number of destinations, things get crowded quickly with all your echoes which are each tracing the path you took to get to the specific destination. What gets annoying is that since the levels are all shaped in convoluted fashion - more out of the intent to have a recognizable image rather than a playable level, you'll often find that there's really no way to stay out of the echoes' way. This isn't all bad since the strategy is to plan out in advance your path such that future journeys will work out - but practially it just doesn't hold together.

The other issue, which ive hinted at, is that I really don't care for the aesthetic. If the developer had focused more on interesting level layouts than cute designs, i feel like it would've gone better. As is, the game becomes uninteresting because avoiding echoes is only so interesting after a while.

So what starts with some really interesting concepts ends in rather boring gameplay.