#echoshift

⭐⭐⭐⭐ Rating: 4 out of 5. PlatformPlayStation Portable (PSP)GenrePuzzleRelease Date Japan: October 1, 2009; North America: March 23, 2010; Europe: March 26, 2010DeveloperArtoonPublisherSCE Japan StudioMODESINGLE PLAYER Gameplay: Echo Shift is a mind-bending puzzle game that challenges players to navigate through a series of intricate levels using time manipulation mechanics. As the…

~ The Summer of low bitrate and pizzicato ~ If you spotted me walking the streets in the distant summer of 2008, chances were I was listening to either the MP3 soundtracks from Rule of Rose or Echochrome. I played both endlessly on my way to and from work, when taking the occasional walk, or when out shopping for supplies. Two completely distinct games whose music is brought together by seemingly fortuitous parallels, in that both composers, who have a background in classical music composition, opted to write music for a string ensemble to perform.

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It was in 2006 that Roger Ebert declared games were not art and served as a catalyst for countless op-eds and tweet threads since. Echoes of gamer’s becoming defensive over their first choice of media to spend time in can be seen in the reaction to Scorsese declaring Marvel movies to not be cinema (they’re not). Two years later, coinciding with the very beginnings of digitally released games on the PlayStation Store, Xbox Live Marketplace, and WiiWare, games such as Echochrome began to be released whether as a conscious or unconscious response to such claims. Echochrome is joined by other digital games of the era such as flOw, Linger in Shadows, NOBY NOBY BOY, .detuned, and Flower, as a shorthand of games to be placed on lists that prove, “Games ARE Art!”

Echochrome, more than the others, seems ideally made to be featured in a museum. Its four main verbs are connect, fall, obscure, and jump. Its highly simplistic not only in the way you play but also throughout its entire presentation. There is classical music as your backdrop, a minimal UI, white and black as the only “colors” present, each level has a A4, B2, etc, numbering system, there are no penalties for failure, only instant resetting, and collections of levels are a “gallery.” You only control the camera perspective, and do so to aid a walking manikin, that wooden object used by artists as a reference when drawing poses. It is easy to imagine a lone PlayStation 3 and TV set up in some corner of the Museum of Moving Images as a permanent specimen of, “Video Games.”

Success in Echochrome means guiding your manikin figure to ghost images of itself scattered about the current figure. Each level requires you to traverses a 3D figure that follows on M. C. Escher’s impossible objects. Controlling the camera, you line up walkways to connect to others, or obscure a gap, allowing the manikin to safely cross. Failure just means falling back to a safe spot, and success means wrapping your head around what each figure is asking of you, mainly if you fully understand the rules introduced during the tutorial. Each figure progressively increases the challenge, the complexity required to progress to the next one. Each is short enough that completing a string of them can only take a half hour or so. Separating itself from other puzzle games is the M. C. Escher art that challenges your traditional understanding of object orientation, depth, and occupying space in a 3D world via a 2D display.

User generated content ensures that the already large wealth of figures available is even larger, and all indications in-game is that the online support is still standing. I’m very impressed that this small game from 2008 still has online functionality, a very rare thing in 2019.

Having earned a solid reputation in its genre, the Mugen Kairou series (known as Echochrome in the west) has yet to be recognized for its greater value in the context of videogame history. Firstly, the deeper understanding of this game series is in close connection with an extended tradition of Sony Computer Entertainment / Japan Studio creations that unite a series of highly conceptual geometric puzzles, very stark and subtle in their visual composition, though accompanied by refined and erudite musical composition.

Given the absence of a concise thematic, these games are also defined by the use of anonymous avatars, of human or anthropomorphic nature, and are intimately related to distinct conundrums of our reality: space, time, visual perception, ratiocination and mutuality. On the back of such peculiarities, a spiritual link between this recent series and the uncelebrated creations by Masahiko Sato can hardly be overlooked. Sato, an experimental artist, author and professor at the Tokyo University of Arts, has associated himself with SCEJ at the very birth of the PlayStation console for the creation of a series of works based on similar precepts, as is the case of the groundbreaking game Intelligent Qube and its sequels; as well as a recent gem named Influence, developed by members of his studio. In truth, the tie between these apparently unrelated series intensifies when taking into consideration not only the origins of Jun Fujiki’s award-wining OLE coordinate system and its subsequent transposition into a ludic context; but also the manner in which Masahiko Sato’s pioneer work in uniting conceptual art and interaction has greatly influenced Yoshio Ishii’s minimalist masterwork Cursor*10 – in effect, the blueprint for Jigen Kairou (Echoshift).

As in Intelligent Qube before it, the designers of Mugen Kairou soon understood that the purely mathematical and geometric kernel of Fujiki’s unadorned structure – highly reminiscent of Oscar Reutersvärd’s optical illusions – was best accompanied by music that, in its turn, followed strict patterns of composition. Identical to the games, and despite of their aesthetic rigidness, both Hattori’s and Sakamoto’s musical accompaniment for I.Q. and Mugen Kairou - respectively - were by no means destitute of sentiment, nor of a vastly ambiguous gist. Toning with a similar conformation, Yutaka Minobe’s music for Jigen Kairou introduces an all-new facet in direct result of a singular system as initially envisioned by Ishii’s in his humble browser game. Whereas the music in the aforementioned cases is comprised of concise themes meant to be played during the game experience in a more or less random order, Minobe’s music bears an increased affinity for its specific contexts.

Due to the intricacies of Ishii’s original game concept, the completion of levels in Jigen Kairou depends on the successful outcome of different actions taken place therein in separate occasions that, when synchronized in perfect harmony, allow one of various figurines to reach the desired exit. This, however, implicates that the player must understand how each of the figurines – representing overlapping time-limited attempts to resolve the puzzles – must cooperate with one another in time and act according to the last one’s behavior. In spite of its rewards for an optimum amount of attempts to resolve the enigmas posed with each new stage, the game allows up to nine different tries. Each of these nine potential tries have been taken into consideration while creating the score, thus resulting in nine different overlapping melodic phrases that can be heard on each series of levels. In other words, Minobe’s music was composed to match the game's mechanics to perfection.

As can be heard in this ninefold melody, pertaining to the first stages of the game, Minobe has kept the simplicity and rawness of instrumental music as was first employed by Sakamoto’s string quartet music for Echochrome; nevertheless, his themes are not only limited to the time window established for each level according to its difficulty, as they present a substantial change in tone mostly because of the replacement of string instruments for woodwind ones – namely different members of the saxophone family from Baritone to Soprano. As the different strata of delicate music come together, an added sense of anxiety is also noticeable in the final phrases, indicating the urgency to complete the level before the player runs out of tries. With such a remarkable format, the composer has sought to underline how the harmony between instruments is essential in the creation of music: much as the solution to the game's very own enigmas lies in a similar arrangement of harmonious actions.

Interestingly enough, the sense of continuity in the series is as much indicated by deliberate similitudes in system and visual solutions as it is discernible, to the heeding ear, in the unique bond between the different scores. As mentioned, the original Mugen Kairou soundtrack astounded listeners around the world with its use of string instruments; Minobe, on the other hand, recaptured that quintessence with the more contemporary sonority of saxophones, conserving the original voice solo from the first game yet adding blissful piano chord arpeggios. Lastly, Sakamoto’s return to the role of chief composer in the recent third rendition of the series, Mugen Kairou Hitari to Kage no Hako (or Echochrome 2) has recovered the original string appeal in his bold one track-composition where the presence of the piano is once again recurrent even in the form of sporadic solos. Accordingly, the presence of Minobe in the context of this particular series not only confirms him as one of the most gifted artists presently cooperating in the making of videogames, as it also confirms the highest musical standards to which this series has always aspired.