Echoes (2024)

The hook: You play a seasoned detective. Someone you used to know has been murdered in a remote town and you decide to investigate. You're told there's a hidden secret in the victim's home, yet you're not allowed to search for this secret until 'later'. You may only enter their home to find a minor clue and then the protagonist decides to leave for no reason. You also can't 'later' confront a person with information you learned a day prior. As a player I feel very railroaded and not at all like a detective in control of an investigation. There was also some very unsubtle foreshadowing regarding the nature of the [spoiler]supernatural twist[/spoiler] in the first few minutes of the game. Why the protagonist super-detective has no immediate follow-up question about why [spoiler] every citizen must agree to be cremated upon death[/spoiler] is the real mystery in this detective game.

Echoes, developed and published by Nova-box, presents itself as a narrative-first experience that places storytelling and atmosphere well above traditional gameplay complexity. Framed as an interactive graphic novel, it follows detective Ricky Fox as he investigates the mysterious death of a close friend in the quiet town of Greenhearth. What begins as a grounded, almost familiar noir setup gradually unfolds into something far more introspective and unsettling, blending emotional character work with a slow-burning sense of psychological unease. The gameplay is intentionally minimal, focusing primarily on exploration, dialogue, and decision-making. Players move through carefully framed scenes, examining clues, speaking with townspeople, and piecing together fragments of the mystery. While there are interactive elements, they serve more as a vehicle for narrative progression than as systems to master. The choices you make throughout the story subtly shape how events unfold, influencing relationships, revelations, and ultimately the ending you receive. These decisions don’t always feel dramatic in the moment, but they accumulate in meaningful ways, giving the story a sense of persona…

I liked it a lot, and it seems to have good replay value since there are multiple endings

10/10!

I got this after "playing" through another Nova-box game, Along the Edge. I liked that one enough to check out the dev's other efforts. This story was interesting enough and there were some surprise twists I didn't see coming. To be clear, you are following a story and your choices don't really matter, as far as I can tell, except to change the presentation. The art style is nice enough and I liked how it changed in the final chapter. My "play" time is nearly double what the story takes to get through it, because I lost my progress when I installed the "game" on a new laptop and had to start the story from the beginning. So, it's only a few hours to get through it, not 10. I would recommend to get it when it's on sale and you like interactive visual novels.

This was a weird and interesting game that I really enjoyed! I'm not much of a horror fan, but I do love a good mystery. With getting too much into it because spoilers, I thought the characters were really interesting and the concept was unique. The art is beautiful and I love the change that occurs in Chapter 5. My one compliant is that the choices you make don't really matter. I replayed the first 3 chapters a few times (which was frustrating without a way to manual save) before realizing that weren't different outcomes.