Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll
Like Wizardry-like Under The Tree, Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll is a GAME game. It’s a very different kind, though – it’s a huge, tightly controlled, side-scrolling Metroidvania with no combat. You’ll get lost. Your Playdate will struggle to keep up. You’ll have an amazing time for a solid 3-5 hours, depending on your level of completionist.
The first and possibly most important note: the controls in Echo feel perfect. It’s like a Celeste, Super Meat Boy, Summit, Mega Man X… I’ve played official Mario games that didn’t feel this good to just jump around in. This is great, because you’ll be doing a lot of jumping around. The levels don’t feel as aggressively precise as some of the games I mentioned, which I also appreciate. You get additional movement powers like dashing and double-jumps very early in the game, but you’ll still have huge parts of the map blocked off until you advance through the story, as is tradition for a Metroidvania.
There’s a lot to explore, and there is a very (but not too) handy map to help you figure out where you’re going (no map markers or anything, but shows you what you haven’t completely explored yet). The amount of story is more than minimal: it’s enough to tell you where you’re going and why, and the characters you meet all have personality, but it’s still a lot of figuring it out as you go. Think Cave Story levels of dialogue. The big appeal for me was digging through every corner and figuring out what kind of wacky thing I have to do to get up to a coin hiding at the top of the screen.
You have one main task in this post-apocalyptic world (make a delivery), but there are lots of collectibles strewn all over the map in thoughtful places. That said, there are definitely some I’d never have known where to look without the helpful items you’ll earn as you go through the game – a lot of hidden paths through otherwise solid-looking walls. You learn to push against every wall as you jump by, like the “uh, uh, uh” of old favorite Wolfenstein 3D.
The game looks terrific, too. The sprites are small and I did have to hold it somewhat close to my face because of my old eyes, but there’s so much packed in here. It comes at a slight cost, though: you can really feel the Playdate getting pushed to its technical limits when there are eight things moving on the screen at once. Luckily, there was a huge stability patch after the first few days on the market that got rid of most of the slowdown, but I had a difficult time on some of the late-game timed jumping puzzles because of lag. Post-patch (if you play it today), you’ll only notice slowdown in a few rooms, like one with way too many spinning sawblades to dodge.
But it’s such a minor gripe. I also got stuck once and wandered around for a solid 20 minutes before realizing maybe I should turn up my volume to catch the audio cues on a puzzle, and the riddles can be tricky! (But they are optional, and you’ll feel a great sense of satisfaction when you solve one.) And that’s what the Playdate Squad Discord is for: collaboration on tricky riddles!
Overall, this game is a massive achievement, and the fact that it can only be played on the Playdate makes it feel very special. It’s like our own Super Metroid, but without all the alien blasting. I had high hopes from the early previews, and it met all my expectations. Everyone with a Playdate that has even a passing interest in puzzle-platformers should play this, and if you don’t have a Playdate, this is a good reason to get one.
(Released October 8, 2024, on Catalog and Itch. Copy provided by developer.)