Wonderful game and really enjoying it so far! I love platformers in the Meat Boy / Celeste vein and Echo scratches that itch (just finished the Lava Lake trial!).
As a recovering game journalist, I've toyed with making games myself, and would love to know how you tackled scene management like the menu screens, etc. I made a working prototype following SquidGod's LDtk tutorial as well, but got completely lost on even just adding a title screen 😅
Thank you!! I love Meat Boy and Celeste, so the comparison is super appreciated.
For SceneManagement, SquidGod actually has a really good 15min tutorial for it here. I wanted a lot of control so I ended up building out a slightly different architecture for it, so I don’t really extend from sprites for anything that would be a manager and that includes scenes. Basically the first thing made is a GameManager, then that creates an instance of things like a SFX and VFX manager.
The last manager it makes is a scene manager and that just handles loading scenes, it does this by storing an active scene when it loads one, and calling a cleanup function in the active scene when unloading it.
A scene is just a script that has it’s own init and update loop, the scene manager has an update loop that just calls the active scenes update function.
I only have 3 scenes (Menu, Intro and Game) so it was probably a bit overkill but it’s not that much code, I reckon the SquidGod scene manager should be more than enough to start with!
I hope that helps, hopefully I can find time to make the rest of the dev log series and go over it in more detail.
Bought this game on catalog and really loving it but I have just one request. As a pretty busy person who plays his Playdate during commutes I’d love for there to be an easy option where you don’t get spawned back to the fireplace after a certain number of deaths. I know Souls-like fans love all that but personally I end up never playing the game more than a few minutes because I find it too discouraging having to do the same trajectories over and over. Either way, thanks for doing an amazing job on this gem!
Totally understandable request! I went back and forth about adding an assist mode, only due to the amount of time I had to work on it before release. The game has done well enough to put a bit more time into dev though so I’m almost defo gonna add some alternate game modes (some assist features and an extra hard one life mode) in the future, no eta yet tho. Thanks so much for playing the game!
I’ve been away from my Play date for a while and having returned, this was the first game I picked up and holy moly, what a superb game to find.
I’m very early on but I’m thoroughly enjoying the slow reveal of the depth of the game. The controls are extremely rewarding and the discovery and challenges pitched exceptionally well. I have a sense of a similar challenge level of VVVVVV which makes me excited and a little anxious at the same time.
Really love this game and have been speedrunning it lately. I was wondering if you're still working on any patches/updates because I seem to have a somewhat repeated crash/bug. Each time it starts with the audio repeating the same half dozen notes and then the game crashed out when either trying to save or when losing the final heart and returning to the last campfire.
Ahhh this is super helpful thank you!! I am still working on bugfixes when I have time, as soon as I get back home on Sunday I’ll have a look at fixing this crash!
I appreciate you spending your time speedruning it as well! I’m glad you’re enjoying it :D
I noticed the new updated on the Playdate Catalog and tried it out. The old crashes, which were very predictable (always the same place and time on a speedrun) are gone, but now I've been finding some new unpredictable ones. Also the new crashes take a considerable longer time for the Playdate to restart (went from a few seconds to up to ~24 seconds to restart).
I got a couple crashes captured on this VOD if it helps;
20:46 Audio starts to cycle and crashes at 21:01 with a quick restart (sorry about my own audio on this - my mic was dying). 31:56 A very long to restart crash with no indication the crash was coming with a long (24 second) restart.
Really appreciate the effort and time you've put into the game so I hope sharing these is appropriate and not annoying.
Ahh thanks for the update, it’s not annoying at all, it’s the complete opposite! It’s super helpful to know these crashes are in there.
Is there any chance you have error logs? Are you playing it through playdate mirror to stream? Cause it doesn’t show any error screen when it crashes, usually it has “press a for more info” and that tells you what happened to cause it to crash.
Was playing through Mirror and typically just keep my eyes on the Mirror screen when streaming. I'll see if I can repeat the crash and share anything I can to the Discord. Thanks!
Ahh thanks so much, it was really nice to see you enjoy it!! It’s absolutely okay to post the link here, I would have happily given you a promo code if I knew you were doing it!
I appreciate the interest! Yeah defo, I don’t know when cause work is busy for next month or 2, but it’ll likely launch on pc at some point next year, could be earlier but the latest would likely be mid summer.
Great game! I really enjoyed the exploration and the good platforming challenges. I'm trying to get the 100% (around 5 hours of gameplay). The only (small) downside is that the ending was interrupted by a bug (I wanted to screeshot the epilog and the Playdate crashed when I did it... When I restarted, the character was gone forever).
Sorry about that, I’m gonna try and put out a fix for people that have had this soon, just had a lot on at work.
I’m gonna add an interactable that will re trigger the final cutscene, and try to fix future crashes, I’m pretty sure they’re “out of memory” errors, so I’ll need to garbage collect manually or something.
Thanks!! That’s fair, I tend to think of the screens as levels and the 4 groups of levels as areas, but you’re right that it’s probably not how players see them, I’ll think about changing it soon :)
What a great game! Sooooo happy to see such an amazing adventure game for Play date <3 hats down for the developer! But I am stuck at Lava Lake start :/ I am walking in circles and there’s no way for me to continue:)) pleaseeee give us a little tip
amazing game! Just helped the blacksmith clean his chimney - he said I can now smash through boulders or something? How do I do that, did I run into a bug?
Ahh thank you, it’s a little convoluted so I can understand the confusion, basically you just double jump near any breakable rock, the boom from your boots will smash the rock! :D
It was an attempt at a new kind of metroidvania ability, I’m unsure of it’s success design wise but it does feel a little cool
Been in my wishlist for a while now, really happy it was included in the recent catalogue sale. However, any chance of a demo (just 1-2 rooms), in order to get a feel for the controls and atmosphere? I love me some demos.
I’d love to make a little demo for it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to anytime soon, I’m back at work and mostly focusing my spare time on bug fixes / extra content for a later update at some point.
I also love demos and knowing me I’ll at least want to make it a fun little thing with an objective to complete :D
Thanks Orkn!! That means a lot coming from you, still lots to optimise but I wouldn’t have gotten a bunch of the bugs fixed as fast without your help, I appreciate it a lot!
Just excellent! In my top 3 Playdate games for sure! Atmosphere is amazing, the controls and gameplay are spot on and satisfying. This is a metroidvania I WANTED to explore every bit of.
Very minor nit picks:
I wish the player character had a just a touch of flare or character... example Quote from Cave Story and Celeste from the original Celeste are pretty blank-slatey characters too, but their design had something that popped and make them less generic. White-kid-with-pompadour (who also has very little stated motivation).. just doesn't elevate the game.
The ending isn't enough. Up to the VERY end all the dialog and story were charming and just the right balance of brevity vs. motivation.
Really if those two things were fleshed out, even just a little - I'd be speaking of this game in the same breath as Cave Story and Celeste. Especially considering the limitations of the Playdate, it's just that damn good - well done.
The "Brothers in combat" riddle is not satisfying. The word "Apathy" doesn't make sense in context of the answer. "Library" is a stretch as well. The other riddles were spot on!
The second time challenge is a bit too unforgiving, given 1) the slow down in these section - especially with the sound on and 2) the imperfect alignment of sound and graphics.
I'm at 97%.. I think the last thing I am missing is a final heart piece - but there's no way for me to find it without simply scouring the map. The dark sections and "top" sections of the map make it unclear what areas I may not have explored. Wanna DM me the locations of any hard to find heart pieces ;) ?
I only took the time to type out this feedback because of how really impressed I am with Echo: The Oracle's Scroll. If you own a Playdate this is a must play if you even kinda like platformers and metroidvanias.
Ahh wow, thank you so much!! This is such a nice thing to read, I will absolutely try to address a few of these issues in updates!
Performance of the game, especially in the second trial, along with how hard it is to find the last heart piece should hopefully be taken care of in the next update and that should be up this weekend!
For the riddle, Apathy is supposed to relate to it causing no concern but overall, riddle design is somewhat new to me, I might take another stab at rewording it.
Completely agree on the ending, I would like to add a very tiny cutscene to at least give it a bit of a climax. It was a victim of having to wrap up the game for release. Defo something I’d like to rework if I can justify a big update.
The player character being so understated is something I can understand not liking, it’s a design choice that has pros and cons, they’re kind of a proto-link (zelda) and as silent a protagonist as possible.
This is my first game in this series and I imagine that I’ll follow a similar trajectory, developing flourishes on the design with each new story.
I appreciate all this feedback so so much, I’m still stunned people are finishing the game, let alone caring enough to tell what they would want to like it more! Thank you!!
amazing! Hopefully when you update the ending you make it possible for folks who have already completed the last quest to talk again to the final quest turn-in character so we can see the new ending :)
That's the part I am gravitating to but after reading the comments. I feel like I won't get it. I'll be sure to message in a few days on twitter if I can't figure it out, thanks man.
Thank you!! I defo understand that and I appreciate the feedback, I playtested them on a few people and tried to refine them as best as possible, there is one I might update to be a little clearer but I was aiming for them to be side objectives so none are needed to complete the game.
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Wonderful game and really enjoying it so far! I love platformers in the Meat Boy / Celeste vein and Echo scratches that itch (just finished the Lava Lake trial!).
As a recovering game journalist, I've toyed with making games myself, and would love to know how you tackled scene management like the menu screens, etc. I made a working prototype following SquidGod's LDtk tutorial as well, but got completely lost on even just adding a title screen 😅
Thank you!! I love Meat Boy and Celeste, so the comparison is super appreciated.
For SceneManagement, SquidGod actually has a really good 15min tutorial for it here. I wanted a lot of control so I ended up building out a slightly different architecture for it, so I don’t really extend from sprites for anything that would be a manager and that includes scenes. Basically the first thing made is a GameManager, then that creates an instance of things like a SFX and VFX manager.
The last manager it makes is a scene manager and that just handles loading scenes, it does this by storing an active scene when it loads one, and calling a cleanup function in the active scene when unloading it.
A scene is just a script that has it’s own init and update loop, the scene manager has an update loop that just calls the active scenes update function.
I only have 3 scenes (Menu, Intro and Game) so it was probably a bit overkill but it’s not that much code, I reckon the SquidGod scene manager should be more than enough to start with!
I hope that helps, hopefully I can find time to make the rest of the dev log series and go over it in more detail.
This a great help, thanks!
Bought this game on catalog and really loving it but I have just one request. As a pretty busy person who plays his Playdate during commutes I’d love for there to be an easy option where you don’t get spawned back to the fireplace after a certain number of deaths. I know Souls-like fans love all that but personally I end up never playing the game more than a few minutes because I find it too discouraging having to do the same trajectories over and over. Either way, thanks for doing an amazing job on this gem!
Totally understandable request! I went back and forth about adding an assist mode, only due to the amount of time I had to work on it before release. The game has done well enough to put a bit more time into dev though so I’m almost defo gonna add some alternate game modes (some assist features and an extra hard one life mode) in the future, no eta yet tho. Thanks so much for playing the game!
I’ve been away from my Play date for a while and having returned, this was the first game I picked up and holy moly, what a superb game to find.
I’m very early on but I’m thoroughly enjoying the slow reveal of the depth of the game. The controls are extremely rewarding and the discovery and challenges pitched exceptionally well. I have a sense of a similar challenge level of VVVVVV which makes me excited and a little anxious at the same time.
Love it. Well done team.
Thanks so much!! I’m glad you’re enjoying it :D I hope it continues to be fun. VVVVVV is a fantastic game so that comparison blows my mind!
Really love this game and have been speedrunning it lately. I was wondering if you're still working on any patches/updates because I seem to have a somewhat repeated crash/bug. Each time it starts with the audio repeating the same half dozen notes and then the game crashed out when either trying to save or when losing the final heart and returning to the last campfire.
If it helps, you can see it twice in this vid
Happens around ~20:51 and around 27:08.
Ahhh this is super helpful thank you!! I am still working on bugfixes when I have time, as soon as I get back home on Sunday I’ll have a look at fixing this crash!
I appreciate you spending your time speedruning it as well! I’m glad you’re enjoying it :D
I noticed the new updated on the Playdate Catalog and tried it out. The old crashes, which were very predictable (always the same place and time on a speedrun) are gone, but now I've been finding some new unpredictable ones. Also the new crashes take a considerable longer time for the Playdate to restart (went from a few seconds to up to ~24 seconds to restart).
I got a couple crashes captured on this VOD if it helps;
20:46 Audio starts to cycle and crashes at 21:01 with a quick restart (sorry about my own audio on this - my mic was dying).
31:56 A very long to restart crash with no indication the crash was coming with a long (24 second) restart.
Really appreciate the effort and time you've put into the game so I hope sharing these is appropriate and not annoying.
Ahh thanks for the update, it’s not annoying at all, it’s the complete opposite! It’s super helpful to know these crashes are in there.
Is there any chance you have error logs? Are you playing it through playdate mirror to stream? Cause it doesn’t show any error screen when it crashes, usually it has “press a for more info” and that tells you what happened to cause it to crash.
I dunno if you use discord but I have a bug report channel on mine and if you post it in there it makes it a bit easier for me https://discord.com/channels/948229596082487366/1290047190651113534
Just joined your Discord.
Was playing through Mirror and typically just keep my eyes on the Mirror screen when streaming. I'll see if I can repeat the crash and share anything I can to the Discord. Thanks!
Wonderful work! Took the liberty of posting a short review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ZJbLfCd3Bw Hope it's cool to post a link here?
Ahh thanks so much, it was really nice to see you enjoy it!! It’s absolutely okay to post the link here, I would have happily given you a promo code if I knew you were doing it!
Very kind of you! Thanks and congrats on such a stellar game!
Seems very interesting game. Any chance of a pc release in the future?
I appreciate the interest! Yeah defo, I don’t know when cause work is busy for next month or 2, but it’ll likely launch on pc at some point next year, could be earlier but the latest would likely be mid summer.
Great game! I really enjoyed the exploration and the good platforming challenges. I'm trying to get the 100% (around 5 hours of gameplay). The only (small) downside is that the ending was interrupted by a bug (I wanted to screeshot the epilog and the Playdate crashed when I did it... When I restarted, the character was gone forever).
Sorry about that, I’m gonna try and put out a fix for people that have had this soon, just had a lot on at work.
I’m gonna add an interactable that will re trigger the final cutscene, and try to fix future crashes, I’m pretty sure they’re “out of memory” errors, so I’ll need to garbage collect manually or something.
No rush ;) The amount of work you put into the game is tremendous.
the game is great, but it has 4 levels not 250. I think you must mean 250+ screens.
Anyhow, i absolutely loved it.
Thanks!! That’s fair, I tend to think of the screens as levels and the 4 groups of levels as areas, but you’re right that it’s probably not how players see them, I’ll think about changing it soon :)
I would say “4 adventure areas, over 250 screens”
What a great game! Sooooo happy to see such an amazing adventure game for Play date <3 hats down for the developer! But I am stuck at Lava Lake start :/ I am walking in circles and there’s no way for me to continue:)) pleaseeee give us a little tip
Thank you!! I’m guessing the guard won’t let you through? If it is at that point, the crumbling ground might reveal a path down!
If it’s not at that point then lemme know I’ll try to help in more detail in a dm or something
There’s a thread in the games channel of the playdate squad discord as well, where players share hints and tips for the game :D
Just wanted to express my support for such a great game! Only at Lava Lake, but enjoying it so much!
Thanks so much!! I really appreciate it :D
amazing game! Just helped the blacksmith clean his chimney - he said I can now smash through boulders or something? How do I do that, did I run into a bug?
Ahh thank you, it’s a little convoluted so I can understand the confusion, basically you just double jump near any breakable rock, the boom from your boots will smash the rock! :D
It was an attempt at a new kind of metroidvania ability, I’m unsure of it’s success design wise but it does feel a little cool
Ah! perfect! - as a mechanic its great, mabye the animation could emanate shock waves out a bit more or the rocks break upon landing
Ooo that’s a good bit of polish to add at some point! Yee, a small extra bit of vfx could work
Been in my wishlist for a while now, really happy it was included in the recent catalogue sale. However, any chance of a demo (just 1-2 rooms), in order to get a feel for the controls and atmosphere? I love me some demos.
I’d love to make a little demo for it, but I don’t think I’ll be able to anytime soon, I’m back at work and mostly focusing my spare time on bug fixes / extra content for a later update at some point.
I also love demos and knowing me I’ll at least want to make it a fun little thing with an objective to complete :D
A proper, multi-hour metroidvania, one of the best games on the Playdate!
Thanks Orkn!! That means a lot coming from you, still lots to optimise but I wouldn’t have gotten a bunch of the bugs fixed as fast without your help, I appreciate it a lot!
Just excellent! In my top 3 Playdate games for sure! Atmosphere is amazing, the controls and gameplay are spot on and satisfying. This is a metroidvania I WANTED to explore every bit of.
Very minor nit picks:
I only took the time to type out this feedback because of how really impressed I am with Echo: The Oracle's Scroll. If you own a Playdate this is a must play if you even kinda like platformers and metroidvanias.
Ahh wow, thank you so much!! This is such a nice thing to read, I will absolutely try to address a few of these issues in updates!
Performance of the game, especially in the second trial, along with how hard it is to find the last heart piece should hopefully be taken care of in the next update and that should be up this weekend!
For the riddle, Apathy is supposed to relate to it causing no concern but overall, riddle design is somewhat new to me, I might take another stab at rewording it.
Completely agree on the ending, I would like to add a very tiny cutscene to at least give it a bit of a climax. It was a victim of having to wrap up the game for release. Defo something I’d like to rework if I can justify a big update.
The player character being so understated is something I can understand not liking, it’s a design choice that has pros and cons, they’re kind of a proto-link (zelda) and as silent a protagonist as possible.
This is my first game in this series and I imagine that I’ll follow a similar trajectory, developing flourishes on the design with each new story.
I appreciate all this feedback so so much, I’m still stunned people are finishing the game, let alone caring enough to tell what they would want to like it more! Thank you!!
amazing! Hopefully when you update the ending you make it possible for folks who have already completed the last quest to talk again to the final quest turn-in character so we can see the new ending :)
This is the only thing I need left. Please help me I can't figure this out and it's driving me crazy.
(Apathy puzzle)
The hint that someone put in the playdate squad discord was this “The line that got it for me was the middle one. Clue: What are books made from?”
I don’t wanna spoil too much on a public message board but if you dm on twitter, bsky or discord I’ll happily give a bigger hint :D
That's the part I am gravitating to but after reading the comments. I feel like I won't get it. I'll be sure to message in a few days on twitter if I can't figure it out, thanks man.
No longer on catalog?
It released on both Catalog and Itch at the same time! :D
Oh, the Catalog link seems to be broken?
Oh wow, I’m so dumb! I linked to the dev page instead of the game page, can you tell this is my first time releasing a game…
Thank you, I’ve fixed it now :D
Thank YOU for developing such a great game :)
It is very great. But the riddles are too hard.
Thank you!! I defo understand that and I appreciate the feedback, I playtested them on a few people and tried to refine them as best as possible, there is one I might update to be a little clearer but I was aiming for them to be side objectives so none are needed to complete the game.
Thanks for updating your game. Great!