Echochrome – PSN

In reviewing Echochrome for the PSN last month, I hailed the game as a good concept, presented superbly and deserving of attention of gamers everywhere. Now, faced with the game on the less control-friendly, but infinitely more portable PSP, there’s only one question to answer, does it live up to it’s PSN brother? Of course it does, Echochrome for the PSP is a carbon copy of the PlayStation Network title, which means it’s brilliant.

Echochrome is such a novel and inventive approach to the puzzle genre, it’s a wonder developers haven’t come up with it before. Although it echoes Sega’s Crush in a way, Echochrome takes playing with your mind to a whole ‘nother level. The premise behind the game is simple, manipulate the stage around, follow the five golden rules of Echochrome and guide your minion to each of its shadow destinations.

It’s the five golden rules that really set the stage for the mind-bending design at the core of Echochrome, and all these rules revolve around perspective, anything that you see is, anything that you don’t see isn’t. Get it? You will. The game has a very friendly learning curve and only really starts to challenge about ten stages in.

There are a couple of differences between this version and the PSN one. Firstly, gamers can create and upload their own stages within the PSN version, allowing for an endless supply of new challenges around the corner, with the PSP version, gamers are limited to some more simplistic ad hoc elements. Also, the PSP version suffers slightly by the PSP’s more limited control scheme, but it’s something that Japan Studio has worked hard to get past, and for the most part they’ve succeeded. Echochrome is a great little puzzle game, whether you play it on the go or in the comfort of your living room. Mind-expanding puzzles, great minimalist graphics and an eerie soundtrack add up to a puzzle game for the ages.