There are many different puzzle games that have been released over the years, most of them clones of Tetris, however Sony’s new effort Echochrome seems to stand out from the crowd thanks to its unique graphics and gameplay.
Echochrome certainly doesn’t go for the spectacular, the presentation is very basic with platforms suspended in mid-air and placed on a white backdrop. The aim of the game is to guide your wire character (who constantly walks around the platform) to the echoes which are shadowed figures spread around the level, it is your aim to collect these echoes and then return to where you began.
Although this is a simple premise, it’s what makes this challenging that really makes the game. Throughout each level you are greeted with gaps and holes in the platforms as well as jump pads which cause your character to stray from where you want him to go or fall from the platforms altogether. To get around the obstacles you are required to use the shoulder buttons and D-pad to change the perspective of the camera, by doing this you can then make a gap disappear by moving a pillar in front of it (this is called perspective existence), or change the angle so that the hole in the platform appears to be directly above another platform, causing your character to fall onto that instead of into thin air (perspective landing).
This all may sound confusing but the developers have had the insight to include a tutorial for each of the five laws of perspective used in the game, Perspective Travelling, Perspective Landing, Perspective Existence, Perspective Absence and Perspective Jump. Listening and watching the tutorial will soon have you up to speed on what you need to do in order to progress through each level, although that doesn’t mean that it is going to be easy. Thankfully the controls are designed in a way that really helps the player who is struggling to get to grips with the game, the square button is used to help you connect two platforms together, which is handy because sometimes it is quite difficult to do this when the platforms are in the distance, as even the smallest gap left over will cause you character not to cross, on a even more helpful note, the triangle button will stop your character, giving you time to change the perspective to how you see fit.
Echochrome really is all about practice, in fact once you are good enough and fast enough you will even be swinging the camera around while you character is in mid fall, lining up the platform just in time to catch him before he falls to his doom.
Although the game is fairly simple in it’s presentation it does offer quite a lot of depth. Three different modes of play are on offer, Freeform, which generates eight levels for you to negotiate (though you can skip any that are causing you problems), Atelier which allows you to choose from any of the games 56 stages and attempt any level you like in the quickest time possible or you can even choose a group of eight and complete them in the best possible time.
The last mode is canvas mode, which is where you can create your own levels, this is a great option and lets you create any level that you have in mind. To help you create levels you are given blocks, jump blocks, blocks with holes and stairways, meaning that you can create some great levels that you can either negotiate yourself or pass to a friend to play via Ad-Hoc.
As far as presentation goes, the game (as mentioned earlier) is fairly basic, however you shouldn’t let this put you off, because it is the challenging levels and mind numbing gameplay that really draws you in and doesn’t let go.
There are certainly plenty of addictive puzzle games about, but the PSP has never seen one like this. It may not look like much, but believe me once you start playing Echochrome then you may never put it down again.
