Available now on Steam Early Access for Windows and Mac
ECHOPLEX is a cyberhorror puzzle game set in a chilling near-future.
In the Echoplex, you are followed by an “Echo” -- a duplicate of yourself who repeats everything you do. Faced with a series of puzzles, your goal is to outwit your Echo using strategy and cunning — and retrieve memory fragments that hold the secret to who you are...
ECHOPLEX combines minimalist graphics with live action footage to create an immersive and chilling story world.
- Solve unusual spatial puzzles anchored by an innovative Echo gameplay mechanic.
- Experience the story through puzzle-solving and live-action video clips shot by an indie film director.
- Explore intriguing, minimalist environments.
- Enjoy an abstract soundscape augmented by a “cyber-horror” score composed by Revin Goff.
- Play under intense time pressure as your Echo draws near...
ECHOPLEX is developed by South African indie studio Output Games
EchoplexGame.com
Output Games
Comments
Our experiments with CMYK colors and global illumination - interesting…
Sometimes it looks really pretty (yellow light in a cyan corridor), other times it’s a bit “edgy” for my tastes (magenta light in a yellow corridor, which makes a mustard/peach weirdness).
But with some tweaking of levels and intensity, I think we can get it to work.
And then we can study the psychological impact of being trapped in a candy colored labyrinth, haha…
I'm wondering what your plans are for future game and level design? I saw some of the variation you have with the locked-door mechanic, and it seems really cool, but I also wonder how many levels you could design around that mechanic as-is without it getting stale. It feels like the "echo" following you could be explored a bit more by highlighting the ways in which it differs from a simple timer mechanic and other ways of interacting with that. Maybe you can slow down or speed up the echo? Maybe you could have the echo interact differently with some objects? What if you get somehow get the echo and your path out of sync (moving platforms?) for a bit so you can get away or do something interesting?
Setting priorities as a dev
Pretty sneaky trap…
Yesterday Henk and I were discussing what we should focus on next.
Our first priority list looked like this:
1. Add ceiling lights that flicker when the Echo (the antagonist) approaches
2. Work on the reflectivity of the floor
3. Get the illumination inside the door frames right
REALITY CHECK TO SELF: We’re building an alpha. In our spare time. There’s only two of us. Reflective floors can fuckin wait.
We need to focus on one thing: fundamentals that make the game sticky. That’s all.
Get the basics right. Find out if anyone gives a damn. Then, sure, tweak aesthetics.
That stuff matters, but not as much as engaged users.
So our revised priority list is:
1. Add only game-critical elements to the new look and feel
2. Create a simpler, more intuitive level editor
3. Create a badge/ranking system that rewards users for interaction
Priorities dude.
If your aim is for feedback. This barrier to entry will reduce the amount of people to play and give feedback.
I love your moving platform idea, we definitely want to add more elements like that as we develop the game, to keep things interesting. :)
I haven't registered. Though I do want to check this out. The concepts on display in the video seem interesting, and I'd expect that this game could give players a terrible panicking feeling (which as I understand it, is your intention).
I'd imagine this aesthetic could lend itself to a lot of mechanics. I assume you've played Antichamber (which visually is the game that most looks like this). And Unfinished Swan uses stark blacks and whites to great effect. I guess my feedback here is non-euclidean puzzles excite me, and I'd guess that Antichamber with a level editor is kind of sticky.
It may give you more mileage out of building fewer game elements and helping you streamline further, because the building space around them increases, so to speak.
I'm looking forward to seeing this game develop more. I really like how the aesthetics are coming along too, a shame you didn't get to enter this in Competition G ;)
That first image is not from in-game yet - it's a Blender render (that took 30mins to render, haha). But our goal is that the game looks something like that by the time we get to beta.
We're working on removing the login for the player side of the prototype, just so trying it out is less of a hassle, I'll let you know..
Don't know what competition G is? Soz, just found make games SA...
Also adding my voice that I'd like to see @Nandrew's winding up idea, it sounds quite promising
We're experimenting with portal rendering on the doorways so that the Echoplex can form impossible shapes - the weird lighting effect on the floor is being caused by an occlusion problem that we have now fixed.
I also dropped a soundscape under the video to give a sense of atmosphere - pretty rad!
(Music: "Behaviour statistics" by Salakapakka Sound System (http://ikuinen-kaamos.blogspot.com))
Feedback we're often hearing is to add narrative to Echoplex - this is something we're now working on.
We're still keeping the level design feature, just with a simpler social system than the BADGES! RANKING! GLORY! we had planned.
So above is the beginnings of our new design for the level editor - one that is simpler and more intuitive.
This is our first step towards a grid system that will allow designers to do all tasks in one screen.
This also makes it easier for us to design levels for story mode. :)
Our second test using portal rendering on the doors of the Echoplex.
Portals allow us to form "impossible" architecture - doors will lead to different rooms depending which way you go through them.
The portal is in the center of the doorframe, so right now it is causing some pretty funky color combinations - we're sorting this out.
This is the asset we're using, which seems to be very well supported: https://www.assetstore.unity3d.com/en/#!/content/45383
Thanks for sharing that portal rendering Unity asset!
btw, regarding the rendered Blender image. There are a few Unity packages that do Screen Space Raycast Reflections that might help getting that glossy floor look. Although I'm not sure if any of them will play nice with portals, and they all require DX 11 I believe, and Unity changed something in 5.2 that broke them (though I suspect Unity has fixed this now). But SSRR would brilliant in this game! (if you got it to work).
https://archive.org/details/ManfredoniaCybertronicSoundscape
Tony has kindly released the track on Creative Commons - for the level builder side of Echoplex, we will rely on CC submissions so that users can add music to their levels.
Check out Tony's portfolio here, he also does some beautiful neo-classical stuff:
http://www.manfredoniamusic.com/
Yeah, it's been tricky to get things like reflections to work when you look through a portal, but we'll get there...
:)
Streamlining our level editor.
Cool problem to solve: Let the user create a corridor of any shape without allowing the corridor to be more than one module wide..
Our level editor needed a little algorithm to prevent designers from deleting a module that would break the grid system - this is a (slowed down) visualization showing the "flood" system that Henk developed to solve the problem. Purdy.
Developing our level editor - any doors can now be connected, even if they are in the same corridor.
It looks like the level editor will only be for us at this stage. All feedback we're hearing says the same thing: we should focus our time and resources on building an introductory "story mode" - user-designed levels are for later on once people have an emotional connection to the game. :)
In the Echoplex, you're followed by an "echo" of yourself, who you must outwit to win.
This is our first concept art for the Echo character. I want the Echo to be almost anonymous (as he/she is supposed to be the player).
I like the full body coverage, and the outfit suits the experimental environment. Having done this visualization, I think we may leave the eyes in shadow...
What do you think?
The Character Concept art works really well in my opinions since it has a bit of an uncanny feel to it which I think would work nicely with your strange and wonderful game. Go Wild!
Ronnie experimenting with the first low-poly models of the Echo - one with a kind of radiation suit and the other a creepy Easter Island face...
Progress with the Echo model and rigging - good work @CrimsonZA
btw. I can't beat the "Momento" level. I really just can't see how I can have the cyan door open when the time it takes me to get to the door is shorter than the time difference between me and the echo. (And I can't seem to delay the echo with the yellow door).
I really like the atmosphere, with the rain sounds etc. It feels like a strangely asian future laboratory. The audio feels like it takes a page out of Antichamber's book and the work Robyn Arnott did there.
I would like more story telling (maybe a sense of something woven between the levels). There is already a lot of hints at a world, like the echo, and the symbols. I'd like to know a little more about who I am and what my goal is (presumably to escape). I do love the way the world is currently only hinted at, and hinted at cryptically, often using Japanese alphabet. I'm not saying I want a backstory spelled out to me, but I would like some of the mystery to be gradually revealed (while new mysteries present themselves).
Obviously the Portal story of escaping a laboratory works well here. I can imagine this already being some sort of temporal experimentation lab, and the echo being a mechanism for hunting down the escapee. Or even just there as some sort of future security system that uses temporal doubling technology to protect it's centre. Again, I don't really want these things spelled out to me, but I do think you've got the beginnings of some fascinating world building here, and I think if this is left as just a series of numbered levels you'd be missing an additional avenue of engaging the player (that of narrative mystery).
Also questions like: "Who is the echo?" and "Am I the echo, and was this path always inevitable?" and then "Where am I headed, and is that place less terrible than where I cam from?".
I think there's a pretty good overlap between lovers of first person puzzlers and lovers mystery experiences in video games. It's an audience that Portal created, but one that games like The Talos Principle, Gone Home and The Witness continue to serve.
I'm just posting this trailer here because I fricken love the sound design. It's great even to listen to without watching the visuals.
So the solution is to run straight to the yellow room, step just inside the door, then reverse back out and lock the door. When the Echo tries to repeat what you've done, he hits the locked door, which means he goes back along his path to the beginning, which gives you enough time to get to the cyan door. :)
What happened in my playthrough, was when I tried to lock the echo out, the echo appeared to walk straight through the door. The door obviously started closing just after the echo had crossed the threshold. It appeared to me that the echo could walk through doors, and so I gave up on that strategy. That's a tricky problem to solve, but like you suggest, maybe there's a way to teach that mechanic in a level where the solution is more fool-proof.
Maybe a suggestion in that vein. It might be thematic to implement video cameras (like the monitors you could look though in half-life to check on your enemies). Having a closed-circuit video camera system enforces the theme of being in a facility where you yourself might be being watched. There might also be ways to do some story telling through what is on screens (like some screens might be watching future places within the Echoplex, in inaccessible areas that give some hint as to the nature of the place, or screens that are just playing Solitaire).
Is it necessary that the echo travels back away from the door when it reaches a locked door? I ask this because I think if the echo stood staring at the door in front of it it might 1) appear more menacing than it sort of bugging out or 2) might be much clearer as to what is going on (as in it is obviously waiting for the door to open, this can't be assumed to be a glitch in the programming).
If it is necessary that the echo travels back and forth following it's path between whatever obstacles block it, then maybe there is a way of indicating this state... like the echo is flickering or glitching out (so the player can see the echo is trapped)... Or maybe when the echo is traveling backwards along it's path it reverses it's animation (so it appears like an echo of you in reverse, rather than a person running back to where it started).
Though personally I like the visual of the echo waiting in front of the door passively until it can chase you once more. Though that is more of the horror solution.
I actually think reading emails from scientists/technicians etc isn't a great way of story telling. Obviously it can be used well, but it's not inherently suggestive. I think you can get a lot of information out of just an interface... like if on one monitor there is a diagram of a few corridors laid out, you can see you are within one of the corridors (based on the name for the puzzle told to you at the start), but one of the other corridors just has "QUARANTINED" written across it... or one of the inaccessible corridors is just called "INTERROGATION FACILITY". These are pretty blunt examples, but my point is there can be a lot of story telling done in just UI. And (like environmental story telling) story telling through UI is a lot more suggestive and encourages the player to figure out the story for themselves (which is a lot more engaging than being passively fed a story in chunks of story text).
This dramatically boosted our Greenlight campaign - we went from 30% to 70% overnight on Tuesday. Right now we're at 98%.
So, merci Squeezie!
For instance in Tiger Trap where the Echo gets trapped between the two doors. A monitor towards the end of the level showing the Echo "bouncing" between the two doors could help the player realise that they need to go free the Echo. Not sure if that would dampen the suspense though...
I'm also thinking that might also influence the design/layout of the level. Seeing as the layout of Tiger Trap was heavily based on finding a way to show to the player that the Echo is stuck.
20 Days after launching on Greenlight, Echoplex has been Greenlit by the community.
Thank you so much to each and every one of you who voted and shared the game!
We can't wait to show you the next release - Sign up here to get notified of the Early Access
- Tyron, Henk & Ronnie