When was the last time you finished a game over a weekend? What about in a day, or an hour? Even as someone who enjoys smaller indie titles more often than their AAA counterparts, I couldn’t tell you the last time I finished a game in such a short amount of time. But that is exactly what Echo Isle was designed to be: a game you can play and finish in a single sitting, needing no more than 90 minutes to roll credits. The result is a game that is both simple and fun, but whose brevity isn’t enough to stop the game’s basic narrative and by-the-numbers gameplay from feeling rote.
Echo Isle is a top-down adventure game in the style of Game Boy classics like TLOZ: Link’s Awakening and A Link to the Past. The premise is that there is a lighthouse on Echo Isle that keeps monsters at bay as long as it is lit. Of course, no sooner has this point been made clear in the game’s opening cutscene than it unceremoniously switches off. Following this, a star descends from the sky to land on the island, turning into an enigmatic figure with green hair and a blue shirt; this is the player character, sent to relight the lighthouse. It’s pretty basic, prophecy-derived stuff, setting up a short adventure to collect the four Echo Stones hidden across the island to restore the lighthouse to its former glory.
After retrieving a sword from inside a cave, letting you finally attack monsters, cut down bushes, and smash pots, you set off to explore Echo Isle and its four dungeons. Each of these dungeons houses one of the stones as well as a special item for the player character. These range from a leaf that lets you jump over gaps and enemy projectiles, bombs to damage enemies and break cracked rocks, a scarf for swimming, and a bow to shoot foes and switches alike. The usual suspects of the top-down adventure game, I would have liked to have seen some more creativity with the items and skills they bestowed. However, they are implemented well, opening up the path forward alongside areas and secrets previously inaccessible.
There is no currency to worry about, with hearts to replenish your health dropped by enemies and found under bushes or pots, and all other items are unlocked through progression. Four-leaf clovers that increase your health are found in chests across the overworld, and secret crystals wait to be collected and traded in a secret location. There are a plethora of save points, and a woman living in the forest will make you a potion that revives you on death. It ticks most of the traditional boxes, cutting out what might elongate the purposefully short experience that feels lean but very familiar.
Matching the game’s pared-down narrative and linear progression is Echo Isle itself, with a 5×5 grid overworld map and the four dungeons making up the entirety of the game. I was impressed by how neatly put together Echo Isle was, packing in just the right amount of areas and secrets to make its 25 squares feel full, not cramped and messy. This extends to the game’s four dungeons, each of which has the right blend of combat, environmental puzzling, and exploration without being too long or too simple.
The game has decent enemy variety for its size, and while most of them are your typical fare of slime and skeleton, I thought the game’s bosses were great both in design and execution. My personal favourite was a large horned dragon that breathed fire and charged at me, hitting the walls and shaking the dungeon. Again, Echo Isle isn’t winning any awards for ingenuity, but it nails the fundamentals throughout, with something to find only a couple of minutes away at any given time.
Echo Isle is realised with a classic 8bit pixel art style and charming chiptune soundtrack that harkens back to the era of the games it borrows from. It also ran smoothly throughout, and while there is a lack of options, I appreciate the tidiness of the game’s map/menu screen and UI.
Final Thoughts
Perfect for a single afternoon of gaming, or even a daily commute, Echo Isle is a short, nostalgic experience that looks and feels like the titles it is clearly inspired by, but ultimately offers little more. Aside from the deliberate time/size limitations, Echo Isle doesn’t iterate on what came before, making it difficult to even call it an homage. Charming, polished, and very familiar, I enjoyed my single hour playing Echo Isle, but I wish I had seen some new ideas brought to this little world.
Echo Isle releases on May 20th on PC. A demo is available now on PC via Steam.
Echo Isle was reviewed on PC with a controller.
We would like to thank Josh Koenig Games for the review key.
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