Echoes

Adapted from a SpringThing25 Review

Played: 4/6/25
Playtime: 3h (2 endings)

Echoes was a seminal composition in the discography of the band Pink Floyd. From their album Meddle, it was a watershed, melding their established trippy and entrancing musical compositions with a dramatic leap forward in lyrics and artistic preoccupation. Taking half the album, the work was notice that, as popular as they were, they were on the precipice of a quantum leap forward. A leap that would deliver seminal works: Dark Side of the Moon, Wish You Were Here, Animals (fight me, it belongs in this list!), and The Wall.

Is this to be the legacy of Ben’s Echoes as well? Well first off reviewer, that is a DEEPLY unfair comparison to even posit. Though there are, as any time a full-of-their-conceit reviewer turns their mind to something, ways to wring out some parallels. Maybe I can buy some good will by revealing that Pink Floyd was the first band I resonated with in a non-superficial way, and consumed large chunks of my personality through high school. Meaning for me, even drawing the comparison displays the esteem I have for this author’s works. An ECHO of it, if you will. Uh, you won’t? Oh reader, I have bad news about the conceit of this review…

This author leapt onto my radar with their overwhelming graphical prowess, their composition skills if you will. Professional, evocative, superbly integrated with gameplay and narrative, I can’t think of anyone doing it better currently. On top of that, Ben is creatively voracious. Different platforms, UI experimentation, Google Forms fer crissake. Deeply creative and engaging premises, across multiple genres, crafting finely tuned, friction-free gameplay experiences that are so unfair to the rest of us that maybe he DESERVES to be compared to a towering super group just to take him down a peg.

This work feels like a fractal view of the entire ludography - an anthology of different playstyles, different genres, different narrative aims all bouncing off and resonating with each other in a uniting narrative. Multiple movements all building to a unified whole, as the movements of Pink Floyd’s Echoes does. A quick survey:

Sticks and Stones: the longest play of the three, itself a fractal composition of three movements. A fantasy dungeon crawl leveraging parser tradition, but with a streamlined and zippy arrow-button interface. It is peppered with wit and leverages familiar tropes both as shorthand player guidance and to twist them to humorous or gameplay effect. It is so effective and confident it looks much easier than it is.

Treasure of the Deep: a short, linear horror narrative, employing language not exactly in a pastiche of HP Lovecraft, but HP adjacent, evoking the feel of it without slavishly recreating it. Like the gameplay above, the pitfalls here are numerous and deep, but so deftly avoided it seems deceptively simple. If only there was a word for something that rang and reminded of an original…

Labyrinth: a quasi-ancient-Greek multiplayer escape room, leveraging mythology for soft guidance and mood, but leaning hard into escape room style puzzle play. The puzzles were clever, and put a premium on multiplayer communication (even if schizophrenically driven by a single player).

All three established gameplay conventions, thematic preoccupations and lore unique to their episode but reinforcing and resonating with each other. It would already be an impressive submission if left there. But no! The Master Conductor then unites all three, interweaving those disparate gameplay, themes and lores into a cohesive, finely tuned whole! A series of puzzles follow that stitch them all together in a wonderfully satisfying clockwork that once again appears natural and inevitable when in fact is out of reach to all but the most accomplished watch makers. Kind of like the recurring single note in (musical) Echoes that launches multiple musical divergences, only to reassert at the end.

Y’know what I haven’t remarked on? The graphics. They are, as usual, uniformly wonderful when employed, but just not the focus of the work here. They precisely fit the concerns of the work, enhancing both gameplay and dramatic beats, but still subordinate to the experience. In some ways they are the Careful With That Axe, Eugene of the work, their accomplished quality setting prior expectations, and informing but ultimately only one facet of a larger whole.

So, is this the notice of Ben’s coming quantum leap into superstardom? Is his Dark Side right around the corner? I dunno man, I can’t see the future. Even if not, even if I posit a timeline where Meddle was the last Pink Floyd album of consequence, that album itself was an accomplishment few bands achieve. I still listen to it ALL THE TIME. This feels like the creative space this Echoes occupies.

And here is where the Floyd parallels end. I do not recommend gummies with THIS Echoes.

Horror Icon: Pinhead
Vibe: Kaleidescope
Polish: Gleaming
Gimme the Wheel! : If this were my work I would be so astonished that I could produce something this well honed that I would fall into a creative paralysis over the prospects of further work. I am confident, like Floyd, the actual author will not be so stricken.

Polish scale: Gleaming, Smooth, Textured, Rough, Distressed
Gimme the Wheel: What I would do next, if it were my project.