We love games that involve shadows. But no one on team Kotaku was buzzing about Echochrome ii. Then I saw it yesterday running on a PS3, controlled by the wand-like Move controller. And now I can't shut up about it.
Watch the video. You will like it.
How the game works: The little Echochrome man walks automatically across whatever shadows your controller-directed light source has projected onto the wall. The shadows, as you can see, are of the objects that float in the game's foreground. The little man will hopefully stride toward a goal and not a fatal plummet, if you have lined things up well. He either stands idle or he starts walking, testing the layout of your course. All you can do is let him walk or make him stop; otherwise you have no control over him, just of the shape of his terrain.
The level in the video I shot looks complex at first, but is simpler once you lock the snake-shaped shadow. He has to walk up and down its body and, I assume — I didn't finish it — he's home free. In another level I watched someone play, the shadow that was cast was essentially a horizontal beam. It was dotted with a few shadows from some spheres that displayed as bumps on that beam. When the little man walked onto a bump, he bounced into the air. You can imagine how that would help him jump to new shadow-beams in more complex levels.
The art of playing the game appears to be the act of casting the right shadows and creating the best path. I don't know how complicated things will get, but your eyes can convince you better than I can that this game is at the very least a lovely visual magic trick.
Echochrome ii is set for release as a downloadable game on the PS3 later this year.
well to me it looks really cool, I love games that require using your brain lol
