The Indie Informer

One glimpse of Echo Weaver was enough to stop me in my tracks, but the developer’s pitch secured its place as my favorite game of the week-long convention. “What Tunic did with Zelda,” Moonlight Kids’ team member Chris Sumsky explains, “this game does with Metroid.”

Say no more. I’m in.

To expand a bit on the concept, the follow-up from the creators behind The Wild at Heart is a time loop metroidBRAINia. I love a good pun. What does that mean in practice? A smooth, speedy, thinking challenge.

I fall from the ceiling past a wall sinisterly splattered with yellow. I’ll get to know this area — and the fall — well as my demo progresses. But for now, I have no idea who I am, and what’s going on. I move forward on pure instinct. The contrast between the whimsical art style and the cutting, sci-fi setting immediately enthralls me. To the point where I didn’t realize I was becoming surrounded by fire and needed to move. Now.

Time is a constant companion in this world. The fire spreading around me is a brilliantly urgent way to communicate the concept. If I can go quickly enough though the room, I can find platforms to run, jump, and dodge across that aren’t engulfed. Waiting to try to figure out what everything does means chancing getting caught in the flames. It’s very much a hit the ground running situation.

As I enter into the meat if the demo, I realize time is legitimately part of the design. A segmented bar floating at the top of the screen turns out to be a constantly draining hourglass. Reminding me of Minit, the passage of real time drains the meter and, when depleted, it will reset my loop and send me back to the beginning.

The first obstacle to give me pause is a gate I can’t pass through unless I sacrifice three segments of my time – more than half my total at this point. I have to accept this deal with the devil because, I can’t progress otherwise. My time dramatically shrinks as I walk through the opened barrier. It turns out, this is just enough time to grasp — but not accomplish — the demo’s ultimate goal. I need to get past a gate that closes ten seconds after the loop begins. Y’all, it took me a good minute to get to this point. I had no idea how I was going to make it back in under ten seconds. It seemed impossible.

Sumsky – who I have been cursing good-naturedly throughout as I failed jumps and encountered hostile creatures I couldn’t fight – puts me at ease. He assures me I can’t make the run with the knowledge I currently have and suggests I explore until my time in this first loop runs out. The map is doesn’t have a lot of detail, but I see one gray area indicating I haven’t been there yet.

It turns out the be a training space, and it’s only now I fully grasp the Tunic comparison. To my shock, I find out I have a boomerang-like weapon. Who knew! I could have summoned it at any time if I had known how. It helps me pass through levels — painted with neon and blood — that house forbidden knowledge. As I grow closer to the demo’s biggest revelation, a cultists appears to warn me off the path. But I’m not turning back and step forward to experience a wonderful moment of, “whoa, I could do this all along!”

I won’t spoil it for you, but this new skill, if I can call it that, gets me past the door which before had seemed impassable. The next room sets the stage for a conflict between me and an entire cult of enemies. But I don’t get to take them on, as the Echo Weaver demo ends here. I put the controller down and it dawned on me that I just played my game of the show.