Dark Echo - Horror, but different

Horror comes in all shapes and sizes, from suspense, where noting actually happens, but the anticipation of something happening is the scary part, up to zombies with cut off limbs and a lot more in between. This genre of entertainment has jumped from book and movies, into video games where in almost all cases the chosen type of horror is the one that has zombies and a lot of blood.


This is what Wikipedia says about horror:
“Horror is the name of a genre of stories (and games) that has as goal to scare people as a form of enjoyment.”

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THE GAME

The people from RAC7 Games however decided to do it differently and created a horror game without much graphics and for a very large part based on sound. The idea was to create a horror experience like the one you have from books, meaning that you know you are being followed, that freaks you out, but there is no description of what is actually following you, so you come up with something in your mind. This can be a lot more scary then actually knowing what is following you, depending on your own twisted imagination.


GAME PLAY

You start the game with a black screen and 2 white feet on it, this is you, alone in the dark, not knowing where you are, how you got there and what to do. But once you start to move you ‘see’ the sound your footsteps make in the form of sound waves. These waved bounce of walls and give you a general idea of what the space you are in looks like. You also hear the sound of your footsteps through your speakers and it sounds like you are in a hollow space, possibly a cave.


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The first few levels are of course easy to do, to learn what the sound does and to learn the controls. You also learn how to use a clap with your hand to ‘see’ more of the space around you. The objective for each level is simple, find the exit, ALIVE !

The further you get in the game the more new noises you encounter, from dripping water and flies to falling rocks, but also the sound of your footsteps change sometimes, suggesting a different type of floor, water in one case, or is it blood? The caves also get more challenging, with dead-end sections and sections where the sound waves turn red all of a sudden. Red of course means danger (you think) but what is that thing in front of you? Turns out it kills you with a lot of noise sounds as if something is falling and a “SPLUT” sound. So red indeed seems to mean danger!


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After a few levels, you have gotten used to the dark and the controls, know how to avoid those red bits of danger, figured out how to use switches to open doors and know how to find the exit of each room. But then from behind you a sound approaches AND IT IS RED !! so you know what that means ... RUN ! Now you have to find the exit in the dark, avoiding the dangerous red bits and you have something scary on your tail as well.

Those are the basics of the game but the rooms you are in get challenging later in the game because even at level 10 or so you have to do a room a few times to get to the end because you were not fast or smart enough to finish it in one go and at level 18 you really have to think about what you are doing and come up with a plan to get out of the room.


VERDICT

I have not finished the game yet, but in the 20 or so level I did, I already found a lot of variation in the levels, some are puzzles, others are 'time attack' rooms and there are rooms where you need stealth to get out. I also encountered water where I had to swim across, but the big red beast chasing me was not slowed down by it. So was it flying? I don't think the others I encountered were flying, does that mean there are MORE THEN ONE types of creatures down there ??!! But how many...

A big plus for this game is the price. It cost 2 euro, so that could not be a large reason not to buy it. The other good thing about it is that it is simple to play and there are no hours of figuring out the controls, this is mainly because it was originally made for mobile phones, so it was not possible to have all sorts of complicated controls. It is also a casual game, so you can play just for a few minutes to kill some time and can quit much easier then a large open world AAA game (if you are a real Ludophile you know what I mean) even though it could get addictive.

So 2 euro it is definitely worth the money for the time you will spend playing it and a good way to see how twisted your imagination really is.





Release date on Steam: May 11, 2015

Website: www.darkechogame.com

Developer: RAC7 Games


Publisher: RAC7 Games

Platforms: Android, iOS, GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X

Where to buy:

368650 com.rac7.DarkEcho dark-echo/id951177560 mas_pm_dark_echo



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