Review: echoes: The Dancer:: What an audio mystery is

by BigAJ

Overall: Glad we gave it a try. Would try another… But would be price sensitive.
Background: My family enjoys the UNLOCK! Games and that's our main point of comparison. We also did an UNDO mystery, and this is much more like that.

Rather than trying to solve a puzzle, this is much more like putting a puzzle together. For example, with UNLOCK! You regularly have to combine items or solve codes. With Echoes, the only mechanism is putting items in order. Kinda like having a set of puzzle pieces and finding which ones snap together.

And to me, that's the best reason to try out one for yourself. It's an experience like switching from a puzzle that's a cat painting to a puzzle that's a photo of a landscape, or a 3D puzzle or a where's Waldo / I Spy seek n find. You're going to have different cues or strategies. And this gives you an opportunity to see how you'd do a audio puzzle.

Oh, and even though the instructions say the items could offer visual clues, they are -very- minor. The audio is basically all of it.

Regarding how the app functions… This could 100% been an app alone. Cards offer very little and the interface of scanning them gets a little in the way. Had to restart the app once to get it to play audio. And after that, it would have some difficulty recognizing cards, but that was inconvenient, not a show stopper. It might have helped pace the game and make it a little harder but not being able to string sounds together without a break. So 5/5 for the app.

As for the dancer in particular. I had some concern that it could be very graphic, in an audio sense. It would have been fine for our 13yr, but probably to intense for our 10yr. The story is engaging and has a satisfying resolution. But the game feels a bit short. I would say at a minimum, it's going to be at least 20min scanning and listening to the 24 cards. And rescanning them. Again, the picture isn't a great reminder, so there's a bit of playing memory if you don't want to take notes. Took us 40-60min I'd say (and we -regularly- bust the hour for escape room games 😛 ).

And that comes to the caveat for getting another. I enjoyed the experience, but there's no challenge for replay. I will replay UNLOCK! games again because there's the challenge of the code breaking (and I'm told by a kid 😄 ). But once you know the story, there's nothing more. It's a good story, so it's not like I'll forget. So these are just a short play through and then off to trade. So balance what you think an hour of entertainment is worth.

Hope this helps!

Author Of article : BigAJ

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