Echo Generation Review
Smells Like Teen Spirit
What once was old is new again, as trends, movies, and TV shows frequently prove, with gaming not immune from this phenomenon. While the ’80s are currently a favorite retro era to re-experience through the lens of modern media, indie developer Cococucumber had its sights set on a slightly different decade: Echo Generation is a small-town coming-of-age tale set in the ’90s, complete with all the sci-fi subplots of a season of The X-Files. It’s an entertaining blast from the past, and is both visually and musically impressive. However, the combat system does become stretched a bit thin by the time the six-to-eight-hour campaign reaches an end due to spongy enemies drawing battle out a tad too much.
Players take on the role of a typical suburban teenager, whose days are filled with writing and shooting their first amateur film, “Alien Skin Eaters”, while on summer break from school. They lead a rather ordinary life, loitering around their neighborhood, meeting friends in the nearby treehouse, and taking the bus downtown to visit a store or the local cafe. But there are tell-tale signs of something odd brewing: their father who mysteriously disappeared a number of years ago, the shady maximum-security government compound on the city outskirts, and rumors of something strange having recently crash-landed in the corn fields outside the city limits. All of this provides plenty of reason for a curious and adventurous teenager to pursue an investigation, and with their little sister in tow (because someone has to watch her!), the stage is set for the events of the game to unfold.
No ’90s sci-fi can be complete without the odd dimensional rift or two.
It’s not much of a “quest” set up for the player to embark upon; rather, Echo Generation‘s plot is about the moment-to-moment unfolding of events. This makes sense given the young age of the protagonists, and how, as children, the best they can ultimately hope for is to react to events unfolding around them as the plot develops. The game’s opening hour also plays a little differently than many RPGs, due to the unusual way the plot needs to find its legs before it can really take off. Early on, not much direction is given to the player outside of wandering their neighborhood and getting a sense of the place. To facilitate this, the quest log is quickly populated by several light and simple fetch or delivery quests, making the whole thing feel more akin to a point-and-click adventure than an RPG. However, the later game definitely dips into heavier territory, letting players investigate the scene of a mysterious murder, take on heavily armored battle tanks, and purge a nighttime cemetery of its ghostly population.
Combat takes place via a turn-based system, albeit one with a few tweaks made to the basic formula. Each character comes equipped with a basic attack, and any attack can be made into a critical hit with a timed button press at the moment of impact. This also works when defending against enemy attacks, lessening the damage taken. But each character’s real combat value lies in their special attacks, which are learned by finding character-specific comic books lying around the gameworld. Each of these has a unique animation and string of button prompts that must be executed or timed correctly to pull off the move, and there is a relatively wide variety of abilities to learn.
These special abilities, however, also cost a number of skill points each time they are performed, which require a shared skill point pool that all three members of the battle party have access to. Depleting this pool too much renders special abilities useless, though performing critical strikes and blocks slowly replenishes the skill point well. The maximum amount of skill points available can also be increased when characters earn enough experience to level up, each time granting the player a choice between increasing their health, strength, or adding to the collective skill points available. In order to consistently use the most devastating attacks — once they’re found in-game — a large amount of skill points is necessary. However, since late-game enemies become very spongy and encounters quite drawn out, it is more cost-effective to just stick to the cheaper lower-tier abilities and conserve skill points rather than experiment with more costly offensive options.
What can two kids and their pet possibly hope to achieve against such odds?
Apart from the protagonist and their little sister Lily, there’s one more space in the battle party for a pet, offering the only real flexibility in party make-up. Neither of the two human party members have many reliable ways to heal mid-battle (apart from consuming restorative items), which is where the true value of the third party member comes into play. However, it is not possible to change the third combatant mid-battle, and it’s usually impossible to know when an impending boss would make including one pet preferable over another. This can result in facing a boss without a healer in the party and introduces an element of treating a first encounter with a boss as nothing more than a test run. Luckily, dying and restarting will often only set players back a few moments before the battle, though consumable items are not replenished . Even outside of combat, there is no quick way to swap out pets, requiring entering the menu instead. Since certain quests require a specific pet to be active, this leads to needlessly revisiting the menu screen. It’s a small thing, but with an easy fix that was unfortunately neglected.
Much of the content in Echo Generation directly ties into the main quest’s storyline, but there is the odd sidequest players can choose to participate in. While some may lead to recruiting an optional party member or locating a comic book that teaches a new combat ability, there are a few other moments of discovery built in purely for fun. Some may only net players a collectable, such as the audio tapes scattered around that feature different music tracks from the “Alien Skin Eaters” soundtrack. But there are some genuinely charming bits of world-building for those willing to indulge their natural curiosity to partake in. Discovering whether there’s any truth behind the rumors of the school principal being connected to the neighborhood’s disappearing kids makes it a perfect summer childhood mystery, and with a little perseverance it’s possible to discover why the strange jester out on the country road needs new recruits for his army of puppets.
Cats in games are old hat; get ready for new and improved ghost cats!
From Echo Generation‘s very first scene, the impressive amount of quality in its graphics is plainly evident, with an extremely high amount of detail in the game’s world and characters. Given the voxel art style, everything does retain that retro pixel look, but at such an impressive scale that it allows for tons of imaginative detail. Enemy and character designs are varied and intricate, with towering bosses and environments that are decorated with dozens upon dozens of voxel-art objects. A quick stroll through the neighborhood, for instance, sees lush lawns and vibrant plant life sharing space with a baby playing in its front yard, a grandma rocking on her porch, a dog lazily napping in the grass, while raccoons dig through unguarded trash cans in search of their next meal. Animation, too, has gotten lots of love; ascending to the treehouse, for example, sees all three party members piling haphazardly into a basket to be pulled up.
The developers have a keen eye for flashy visuals, as just about every scene features something worth admiring, from the use of distinct color palettes in environments to gorgeous backdrops of bruised storm skies over the foreboding science facility or a blood-red sunset soaking a serene lakeside mountain vista in pinks and purples. Players even have a little bit of choice in their protagonist. Choosing from a handful of ready-made character models, players get to decide the ethnicity of the protagonist, and even whether they are a boy or a girl. In a nice extra touch, this choice directly affects the character models of their family as well, matching them in skin tone and altering a few lines of dialogue for the remainder of the game. In terms of visual quality, and all the little flourishes associated with it, Echo Generation remains impressive throughout.
Aaah, a beautiful, idyllic sunset. If only it weren’t for the homicidal trash monster blocking the view!
The game’s music is no slouch, either. The soundtrack is full of upbeat, silly, catchy numbers that players will easily find themselves still humming and whistling long after finishing the game. As players experience the gradual shift from the carefree familiarity of their neighborhood and quaint hometown to the unknown dangers of deserted school buildings and government installations patrolled by armed soldiers, the music journeys and transforms with them. Even the tongue-in-cheek spooky side is represented, like a nocturnal graveyard featuring a ghostly Halloween tune. Voiced dialogue, sadly, did not make it into the game, with character voices instead represented by differently pitched sounds.
It’s impossible to miss the overall sense of fun that permeates every aspect of Echo Generation. From its coming-of-age concept to its silly, sometimes irreverent narrative turns, to its memorable presentation, it’s clear this is a pure passion project for its developers. The narrative may not be the hardest-hitting stuff, and combat eventually becomes more of a chore than its payoff is worth due to spongy late-game enemies. But anybody who enjoys a sci-fi yarn that blends Stand by Me with The X-Files, or grew up in the ’90s, will still find plenty to enjoy here.
Disclosure: This review is based on a free copy of the game provided by the publisher.
Outstanding voxel visuals delight the eye
Bumping soundtrack full of earworms
Charming coming-of-age story
Enemies become very spongy towards the end
It's easier to bypass some of the options offered by the combat system
No way to change out party members mid-battle
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