Echoes (an anthology) by Ben Jackson
Playtime: 2 hours 16 minutes
This made me want to talk about:
I’m discussing the three games here in the order I played them (which I thought was effective, would do again).
1. THE LABYRINTH
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I recruited a friend for this one, and I played 87 and Baz (formerly Ruby and Emerald), while he played Jarl and 88 (formerly Sapphire and Citrine).
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I initially expected we might have to try to lobby match or something, but actually you can just tell the game which characters you are controlling and everything works seamlessly (I take it it’s all actually happening locally, meaning the game wouldn’t know if you were lying and had no friend, but also that would be self-defeating since you wouldn’t have access to some of the clues). Structuring the game so we both could progress this way, without actually requiring any connection between our games, was an elegant solution, I thought.
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A fun escape-room implementation, not too hard but made using all 4 characters a necessity, which was nice.
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Strangely, I had real difficulty converting my two maps into the correct sequence of directions, and I ended up sending them to my pal (we swapped after the game and I had no problem with his, so not sure what the disconnect was).
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I loved the quality of life features in the status bar, like the chance to call up previous clues / info.
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We both enjoyed the final fight sequence! It was (my irony credit is never going to recover from saying this) fun to work together
2. TREASURE OF THE DEEP
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This is a linear narrative that, I take it mostly serves to provide lore and context for the setting
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I enjoyed the sound effects and their subtle changes, and the art
3. STICKS & STONES
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Opens with a very funny intro to Torin and Belgrub (I particularly enjoyed the pairing of Torin’s limitation as “has no fear” and Belgrub’s skill “good with glue”)
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all of the interaction with the game can be done through the arrow keys, which was fun! (At times they represent cardinal directions of travel, and at times conversation options or other options for interacting.) It was great for quickly navigating rooms, and the lock puzzle in particular I think would have felt a lot clunkier with a different interface
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the combat wasn’t really too hard even on the difficult setting (not a criticism, just observing)
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It was nice that there was multiple options presented to solve the lock puzzle
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a nice execution of an arc with an initial anticlimatic result followed by a retread of some of the same areas in a very different tone. After the intro to both characters, I was definitely jonesing to play Belgrub, so that was satisfying when it happened. (Amused that, for example, Belgrub can identify the health potion dispenser.)
Notable line:
OK, I’ll allow myself two since there’s multiple games:
My one fervent wish:
I wanted the chance to be nicer to the orcs in Sticks & Stones, or at least not be compelled to kill them for doing their jobs (I looked for an alternative but didn’t find one). This leaned a bit towards one of my pet peeves, where the hero nobly spares the single named enemy, after having killed a bunch of security guards without, apparently, feeling anything about it. And given the generally lighthearted tone it didn’t seem like the intent was to torment the player with ethical dilemmas.
Overall, a very fun collection of games that connects into a larger narrative. I particularly enjoyed the light comedy/adventure of Sticks & Stones and the collaborative gameplay in The Labyrinth
Gameplay tips / typos
I’m not sure if this was intentional or not, but during the endgame back in the central area after completing the three games, when the 4 players from Labyrinth began to appear again, their names initially appeared as the custom names I had assigned them, but then went away and came back as the default names.