I'll admit, I got a little worried about this game from the very moment I saw the two words "Singapore" and "Puzzle." Perhaps it's my deleterious American brain that renders me incapable of solving the simplest of puzzles, but the fact remains that I haven't had too much luck with DigiPen Singapore in the past.
Actually, beyond the whole "too hard to complete under my time constraint thing" I would say my experience with Echolight was...above average, to say the least. I may not be a very good puzzle critic, but from a game design standpoint, this game is very hit-or-miss, which is my favorite kind of game to nitpick.
Let's start with the flaws so we can end on a happy note. First off, the students who made Echolight seem to have skipped a few classes on proper tutorial design. Here's my theory on the subject: creating a tutorial is kind of like raising a child (in this case, the child is the player). It's true that you need some kind of structure to keep your kid within the realm of social acceptability. For example, you can't just let the kid do whatever he or she wants because he or she will soon realize that punching another kid in the face is an excellent way to obtain the lollipop he or she was previously holding. They need to know what's right and what's wrong in order to succeed. By the same token, you can't hold your child's hand too tightly, or they'll learn to hate the very idea of a structured society and devote the rest of their lives to bringing down the fabric of human civilization...erhm...or...in the case of video games, they'll just be really annoyed with the tutorial. Echolight takes the helicopter-parent approach and doesn't give you full range of the game's controls until it's showed you everything you need.
Everything else is really just a nitpick. The sound effect "you win" screen after each level doesn't really fit with the game's atmosphere, which hurts the flow a little bit, but there's nothing really in terms of core game design to complain about. That said, let's move on to the good stuff.
The level design is simple but good. It's a puzzle game, and every puzzle has a solution. More than that, though, the game has an open feel that not many puzzle games can pull off. It seems like every puzzle has more than one right answer, even if that's not the case. I didn't toy around with it enough to find out. I do know that the game trusts you to develop your own strategies, which is a big plus in my book. I nicknamed mine the "bulldozer" strategy because I eventually resorted to mashing the arrow keys in the direction I want to go so that the arrows I previously placed don't get in my way. I do this until I figure out what arrows need to be put where. The difficulty curve isn't insane and it rewards the player enough before hitting him or her with the really tricky stuff. The thing I like most about the game is the very concept. I've never seen anything much like it, and it's a bit too complex to explain here. The visual style is also pleasing to the eye. There's a definite kind of appeal that you get from gradually lighting up the world around you in a manner as festive as in Echolight.
All-in-all, I had fun with Echolight. If it weren't for the crappy tutorial, it would have easily gotten my seal of approval. If you don't have the patience to learn a new concept for a game, skip it. If you do, I think you'll find Echolight to be charming, innovative and fun. Until next time, stay shiny (I get to use that one a lot...I might just make it my sign-off).
Links
Rollin around at the speed of sound: https://www.digipen.edu/?id=1170&proj=25438
