This game's actually pretty neat. The aesthetics and music are nice and the gameplay premise is really interesting for a puzzle game. The logic for the puzzle rules is really impressive to see in action with all the perspective-bending. Unfortunately, actually solving the puzzles is pretty tedious since it takes a lot of effort to line things up just right so they connect, and it's really easy to make a mistake and have to redo that process over and over again plus I'm a brainlet.
Echochrome tem um conceito muito bacana que se perde no tom monótono da direção de arte e som.
É daqueles jogos geniais cujo conceito vai cansando muitas vezes porque como produto ele precisa entregar uma certa quantidade de "conteúdo" pra justificar sua precificação.
Uma duração mais reduzida teria feito dele um título mais sólido, além de uma variação maior da trilha sonora.
É daqueles jogos geniais cujo conceito vai cansando muitas vezes porque como produto ele precisa entregar uma certa quantidade de "conteúdo" pra justificar sua precificação.
Uma duração mais reduzida teria feito dele um título mais sólido, além de uma variação maior da trilha sonora.
Pretty damn cool. When the game genuinely works, it feels like you're playing an art piece that should be displayed in a museum. However, when it doesn't exactly work, it feels more like one of those shitty brain teaser toys that your relatives sometimes give you for Christmas. You know, the ones that are usually made out of wood and tend to rely on a frustrating gimmick you'd never know about unless told of. I still did enjoy this game (especially its soundtrack, god), but some bugs and very apparent jank kinda muddied the overall experience for me.
At the time, this stood large in my mind as one of the prime examples of Sony having the platforms to go for ambitious weird shit, and it was a mind bending concept that really appealed to me.
Looking at it now, it doesn't really live up to the promise of the concept. echochrome is very finnicky and often does not follow its own perspective tricks, completely ignoring the clever solution you just found.
Looking at it now, it doesn't really live up to the promise of the concept. echochrome is very finnicky and often does not follow its own perspective tricks, completely ignoring the clever solution you just found.
A top tier concept trapped in frustrating execution. If the game worked flawlessly, it would be among my favorite puzzle concepts of all time.
echochrome is a puzzle game about manipulating perspectives to create optical illusions. Guide a mannequin to set points in the puzzle structure and back within a time limit using rules that make visual sense, but not physical sense. For example, if you position the camera underneath a structure and fall through a hole, you will land vertically below the hole - even if, in 3D space, you end up at the top of the structure.
There are enough methods for breaking the visual rules to allow every puzzle to have multiple solutions. I routinely solved puzzles using a fraction of the holes and springboards scattered throughout the level. I love puzzle games that never feel like you're being railroaded into a single line of thinking, and I believe the preset levels were designed with that flexibility in mind.
In practice, the game is just not consistent enough with its own mechanics to experience that freedom. If two planes are lined up in such a way that they share a border, their planes will merge, allowing the mannequin to walk between them. However, getting this merging of boundaries to work requires very precise camera alignment, and only activates at certain angles. This greatly increases the tedium of executing an idea, sometimes to the realization the game will not recognize your intention at any angle.
But most damning of all, you are fighting the camera every step of the way - for a game where transversal is controlled entirely through camera movements. Camera speed is slow, and jitters as if it has caught on environmental geometry - in a game where every level takes place in an endless white void. Worst of all, the camera will randomly move on its own to "correct" the angle if you don't fiddle with it for long enough - often when you have been waiting for the mannequin to finish a lap to make a precise maneuver to another section.
In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average, C rank game, and 3 stars represent a solid B rank game. My first impression of this game, after getting familiar with its concepts, was 4 stars at A rank, but the process of playing it eventually frustrated me to the detriment of its score. Which is a real shame, as the ability to create, upload, and download levels makes it a theoretically endless game. I strongly recommend giving this game a download while the PS3's digital store front is still online.
echochrome is a puzzle game about manipulating perspectives to create optical illusions. Guide a mannequin to set points in the puzzle structure and back within a time limit using rules that make visual sense, but not physical sense. For example, if you position the camera underneath a structure and fall through a hole, you will land vertically below the hole - even if, in 3D space, you end up at the top of the structure.
There are enough methods for breaking the visual rules to allow every puzzle to have multiple solutions. I routinely solved puzzles using a fraction of the holes and springboards scattered throughout the level. I love puzzle games that never feel like you're being railroaded into a single line of thinking, and I believe the preset levels were designed with that flexibility in mind.
In practice, the game is just not consistent enough with its own mechanics to experience that freedom. If two planes are lined up in such a way that they share a border, their planes will merge, allowing the mannequin to walk between them. However, getting this merging of boundaries to work requires very precise camera alignment, and only activates at certain angles. This greatly increases the tedium of executing an idea, sometimes to the realization the game will not recognize your intention at any angle.
But most damning of all, you are fighting the camera every step of the way - for a game where transversal is controlled entirely through camera movements. Camera speed is slow, and jitters as if it has caught on environmental geometry - in a game where every level takes place in an endless white void. Worst of all, the camera will randomly move on its own to "correct" the angle if you don't fiddle with it for long enough - often when you have been waiting for the mannequin to finish a lap to make a precise maneuver to another section.
In my rating system, 2 stars represent an average, C rank game, and 3 stars represent a solid B rank game. My first impression of this game, after getting familiar with its concepts, was 4 stars at A rank, but the process of playing it eventually frustrated me to the detriment of its score. Which is a real shame, as the ability to create, upload, and download levels makes it a theoretically endless game. I strongly recommend giving this game a download while the PS3's digital store front is still online.
Played the PS3 version on PS5 streaming.
Couple things here:
A. PS5 streaming is maybe good now? All the games I've been trying fun pretty well. I also have a weirdly good time imagining whatever PS3 I'm remotely connecting to turning on and spinning up my game like a jukebox.
B. God this game is cool. Just concept-wise. We are gonna have a black and white modern classical music only perspective based puzzle game. And put it on that shiny PlayStation 3. Just... good stuff.
3. It's sort of cool the state this game is in now that the network is off. There are like 400 user levels that have been archived for posterity (congrats to anyone on there... I'd be bragging about that on my resume and dating site profiles) and the UI is just sort of abstract on purpose. I love this damn thing. There's a few hundred puzzles just hanging out there waiting for ya.
Couple things here:
A. PS5 streaming is maybe good now? All the games I've been trying fun pretty well. I also have a weirdly good time imagining whatever PS3 I'm remotely connecting to turning on and spinning up my game like a jukebox.
B. God this game is cool. Just concept-wise. We are gonna have a black and white modern classical music only perspective based puzzle game. And put it on that shiny PlayStation 3. Just... good stuff.
3. It's sort of cool the state this game is in now that the network is off. There are like 400 user levels that have been archived for posterity (congrats to anyone on there... I'd be bragging about that on my resume and dating site profiles) and the UI is just sort of abstract on purpose. I love this damn thing. There's a few hundred puzzles just hanging out there waiting for ya.