4 ms·

A few comments on the game: - would be good to support two tap moves like on lichens rather than only drag and drop - drag and drop seems really buggy on my p

A few comments on the game: - would be good to support two tap moves like on lichens rather than only drag and drop - drag and drop seems really buggy on my phone. Often had to repeat my move. - accidentally clicked give up instead of try again, then my game was over? Not really sure why there is a give up button at all. - the timer just adds stress instead of fun, for me. - hated the music being on by default - imho the obstacles should be symbols, not just a different square colour. I had trouble seeing them.

JJCUBER 3y ago
Just like you, I accidentally hit "give up" at one point by mistake. I actually found the music quite good. In a somewhat similar vein, I found the endless mode to be a bit tiring, since you have to keep up the pace to maintain enough time. It could be nice to have a pause button for endless mode (or both modes). Of course, it would defeat the purpose if someone could just pause right after seeing each board, but I feel like having a pause button with some sort of multi-minute cooldown could be an interesting addition. For some people, this might defeat the purpose of endless mode, but it's just a thought! I also ended up playing endless long enough to get a score that was too large; my score overlapped with my name on the leaderboard. (I reached level 157 with 136.7m score, then I let time run out due to my hands getting tired.)
- stevage 3y ago
  > I actually found the music quite good. I'm not expressing an opinion on whether the music is good or not. I just really don't want (or expect) any music to play. It's particularly annoying when I play on my phone in a quiet moment, and suddenly music is blasting out. It doesn't seem to remember the setting.
  - ramly 3y ago
    That's fair. Side note, unrelated to echo chess - which of these (very eclectic) TBS or puzzle games would you say have soundtracks that are more of a fit for the solo puzzle-solving experience you'd find ideal: Tetris (tanaka), HOMM (romero), Civ (knorr), or small indies like Monument Valley, Into the Breach, etc.?
    - stevage 3y ago
      Silence would be my preference, honestly. Then I can listen to my own music if I want. Lightweight puzzles are likely to be something I do while doing something else. It's pretty presumptuous for a puzzle to think that there is no other music that it could conflict with.
      - ramly 3y ago
        Interesting perspective. Most people I know who are into strategy games listen to their favorite OSTs in their daily life. Personally, my Spotify playlists are mostly filled with composers like Paul Romero. There’s nothing like a good track to set the ‘right’ ambience (if there is such a thing) envisioned for an audience. I agree that music is a super personal thing, though - in games or beyond. That mute button in echo chess is as old as the first SFX audio file I playtested. Point taken on its default state and persistence. Thanks for sharing your candid thoughts throughout.
        stevage 3y ago
        I wouldn't say I'm all that into strategy games. I find them a bit addictive so tend to avoid them. I did play a bit of Grand Ages: Rome recently. The music was ok, but it obviously gets repetitive. I have tried the thing you mention and listened to computer game music in other contexts, but really, it's not my thing. I'd rather listen to classical, or jazz, or pop, or...almost anything.
        ramly 3y ago
        Understandable take. I also recognize that “strategy games” is such a broad umbrella term. Back in the OG board game era (pre-neo-renaissance of tabletop gaming these past pandemic years), we had abstract grand strategy like Risk, old-school tactical wargames, and crossword-type or rush-hour-like puzzle games. Nowadays, if you take MOBAs, TBS, RTS, 4X, GS, or even any TRPG or RTT, odds are it can viably be categorized as a “strategy” game to some extent or another. Even the new strategy board game and analogue CCG scene is so stratified these days. Which one of these games would count as the “true” archetype of a strategy game: Mage Knight, Terraforming Mars, Agricola, Sovereign Chess, Dune Imperium, Gloomhaven, Azul, Catan, Theomachy, or MTG? They each seem to have increasingly more “strategic flavor” differences separating them from each other than similarities. Same goes for table-top RPGs of the 2020s. All this is to say, if the strategy genre itself can’t be painted with the same brush, then it sure can’t be optimally paired with the same universal type of music.
- ramly 3y ago
  Your outrageous high score is breaking the endless leaderboard UI! Well done :) I get your point about the pausing concern. I've actually thought about that in past playtests and I think the long-term solution for these things is likely even more drastic: increasing the difficulty of the procedural gens incrementally more after X levels have passed. And/or capping the winnable time back from solving every consecutive level after the first Y. There are lots of interesting things that can be explored in this area - see the last section of the original echo chess writeup. Awesome to hear you reached LEVEL 157 in one run! Curious if you got taken by the 'one more turn syndrome' [0] in that session, or if you had embarked on this run with a clear goal of surpassing 100,000,000? And please make sure to ice those fingers. echo chess cannot be held liable for finger damage. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series)
  - JJCUBER 3y ago
    Increasing the difficulty over time sounds fun! As an idea, there could also be multiple endless modes which either have faster/slower ramp-ups, start "further into" the difficulty, or just have fixed "easy," "medium," "hard," and "ramp-up" (curve). To be honest, at first, it was less of an urge to get "one more turn" in and more of an urge to make sure I had beat my original high score. Once I surpassed it, I was trying to see how long I could survive without running out of time. It was at that point where I realized I could keep going forever without running out of time (I could recoup more time than I spent, and I would regularly hit 99 capped time). After this revelation, I set a goal of going until my hands got tired. Once my hands got tired, I almost succumbed to the "one more turn syndrome," but after moving (I believe) one piece, my score had a nice 3-digit repeating pattern and was a round number, so I called it quits. Luckily(?), my hands have made it through games that are far more torturous on the fingers (though it has been a while).
    - ramly 3y ago
      This reads like the incident history chart of a new patient of hand therapy. Love it.
ramly 3y ago
Great feedback, thanks for that! There's plans to support two taps soon. Same for an 'are you sure' button when giving up. The reason the button is there (aside from its psychological benefit to not give up in early playtesting) is that it allows players who get stumped at a certain level to save their high score to the leaderboard without finishing the game. As explained in the post linked above, puzzle games are, in some sense, different from arcade games in that you can never just die. Which brings us to the next point: 'endless' mode handles the game over state with a countdown timer, ensuring a convergence toward an end game even in a (theoretically) infinite game mode. But that mode is purposefully designed to be more arcade-like and speedrunnable, versus 'classic' mode which is dedicated to strategic patient thinkers. If timing in games stresses you out, definitely feel free to stick to classic instead of endless mode. Many folks love the timing aspect, but if you've never been into things like blitz chess, it's totally understandable. Thankfully, you'd be happy to hear that the scoring system is purposefully designed to minimize the impact of timing in classic mode for exactly that reason (check out the 'Scoring System' section in the post). p.s. I'm surprised to hear drag and drop is giving you issues on your phone, sorry about that. Not sure any players have had that issue before. Do you mind sharing what device/os/browser you're using, and if you're accessing echochess.com in a fresh browser tab directly?
- JJCUBER 3y ago
  Similar to them, I also noticed some weird issues on iOS where it would sometimes drag the page when moving pieces and, other times, prevent seeing either the top or bottom portion of the UI. I ended up moving to PC for that reason. I also recall not being able to type in a name for the score at the end (on iOS). One other thing I noticed was that submitting a lower score (at least in endless) still overrides your old one. (My scores went 860.5k -> 314.7k -> 446.9k -> 136.7m, overriding every time.)
  - ramly 3y ago
    Question: when you say iOS, do you mean navigating to echochess.com directly on a new window in a browser like safari? The only time I've seen that weird behavior you're describing is when a webview is being loaded for the game from within some other app. The second part sounds like a bug - thanks for the heads-up! I'm still not over how you casually dropped that you reached 136.7 MILLION btw. gg.
NooneAtAll3 3y ago
what's wrong with music on by default? flash games operated like that from the beginning till the end
- stevage 3y ago
  I guess it's normal in the arcade world, but not in the puzzle world.
  - ramly 3y ago
    Actually most well-reviewed puzzle games on Steam and mobile do come with some killer background tracks. The echo chess track has been surprisingly popular - anecdotally, one of the early playtesters mentioned they routinely run echo chess in a background tab while working to get into deep focus mode. Granted, the board game version of the puzzle word does music differently for obvious reasons.

JJCUBER 3y ago

Just like you, I accidentally hit "give up" at one point by mistake. I actually found the music quite good. In a somewhat similar vein, I found the endless mode to be a bit tiring, since you have to keep up the pace to maintain enough time. It could be nice to have a pause button for endless mode (or both modes). Of course, it would defeat the purpose if someone could just pause right after seeing each board, but I feel like having a pause button with some sort of multi-minute cooldown could be an interesting addition. For some people, this might defeat the purpose of endless mode, but it's just a thought! I also ended up playing endless long enough to get a score that was too large; my score overlapped with my name on the leaderboard. (I reached level 157 with 136.7m score, then I let time run out due to my hands getting tired.)

stevage 3y ago
> I actually found the music quite good. I'm not expressing an opinion on whether the music is good or not. I just really don't want (or expect) any music to play. It's particularly annoying when I play on my phone in a quiet moment, and suddenly music is blasting out. It doesn't seem to remember the setting.
- ramly 3y ago
  That's fair. Side note, unrelated to echo chess - which of these (very eclectic) TBS or puzzle games would you say have soundtracks that are more of a fit for the solo puzzle-solving experience you'd find ideal: Tetris (tanaka), HOMM (romero), Civ (knorr), or small indies like Monument Valley, Into the Breach, etc.?
  - stevage 3y ago
    Silence would be my preference, honestly. Then I can listen to my own music if I want. Lightweight puzzles are likely to be something I do while doing something else. It's pretty presumptuous for a puzzle to think that there is no other music that it could conflict with.
    - ramly 3y ago
      Interesting perspective. Most people I know who are into strategy games listen to their favorite OSTs in their daily life. Personally, my Spotify playlists are mostly filled with composers like Paul Romero. There’s nothing like a good track to set the ‘right’ ambience (if there is such a thing) envisioned for an audience. I agree that music is a super personal thing, though - in games or beyond. That mute button in echo chess is as old as the first SFX audio file I playtested. Point taken on its default state and persistence. Thanks for sharing your candid thoughts throughout.
      - stevage 3y ago
        I wouldn't say I'm all that into strategy games. I find them a bit addictive so tend to avoid them. I did play a bit of Grand Ages: Rome recently. The music was ok, but it obviously gets repetitive. I have tried the thing you mention and listened to computer game music in other contexts, but really, it's not my thing. I'd rather listen to classical, or jazz, or pop, or...almost anything.
        ramly 3y ago
        Understandable take. I also recognize that “strategy games” is such a broad umbrella term. Back in the OG board game era (pre-neo-renaissance of tabletop gaming these past pandemic years), we had abstract grand strategy like Risk, old-school tactical wargames, and crossword-type or rush-hour-like puzzle games. Nowadays, if you take MOBAs, TBS, RTS, 4X, GS, or even any TRPG or RTT, odds are it can viably be categorized as a “strategy” game to some extent or another. Even the new strategy board game and analogue CCG scene is so stratified these days. Which one of these games would count as the “true” archetype of a strategy game: Mage Knight, Terraforming Mars, Agricola, Sovereign Chess, Dune Imperium, Gloomhaven, Azul, Catan, Theomachy, or MTG? They each seem to have increasingly more “strategic flavor” differences separating them from each other than similarities. Same goes for table-top RPGs of the 2020s. All this is to say, if the strategy genre itself can’t be painted with the same brush, then it sure can’t be optimally paired with the same universal type of music.
ramly 3y ago
Your outrageous high score is breaking the endless leaderboard UI! Well done :) I get your point about the pausing concern. I've actually thought about that in past playtests and I think the long-term solution for these things is likely even more drastic: increasing the difficulty of the procedural gens incrementally more after X levels have passed. And/or capping the winnable time back from solving every consecutive level after the first Y. There are lots of interesting things that can be explored in this area - see the last section of the original echo chess writeup. Awesome to hear you reached LEVEL 157 in one run! Curious if you got taken by the 'one more turn syndrome' [0] in that session, or if you had embarked on this run with a clear goal of surpassing 100,000,000? And please make sure to ice those fingers. echo chess cannot be held liable for finger damage. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Civilization_(series)
- JJCUBER 3y ago
  Increasing the difficulty over time sounds fun! As an idea, there could also be multiple endless modes which either have faster/slower ramp-ups, start "further into" the difficulty, or just have fixed "easy," "medium," "hard," and "ramp-up" (curve). To be honest, at first, it was less of an urge to get "one more turn" in and more of an urge to make sure I had beat my original high score. Once I surpassed it, I was trying to see how long I could survive without running out of time. It was at that point where I realized I could keep going forever without running out of time (I could recoup more time than I spent, and I would regularly hit 99 capped time). After this revelation, I set a goal of going until my hands got tired. Once my hands got tired, I almost succumbed to the "one more turn syndrome," but after moving (I believe) one piece, my score had a nice 3-digit repeating pattern and was a round number, so I called it quits. Luckily(?), my hands have made it through games that are far more torturous on the fingers (though it has been a while).
  - ramly 3y ago
    This reads like the incident history chart of a new patient of hand therapy. Love it.

ramly 3y ago

Great feedback, thanks for that! There's plans to support two taps soon. Same for an 'are you sure' button when giving up. The reason the button is there (aside from its psychological benefit to not give up in early playtesting) is that it allows players who get stumped at a certain level to save their high score to the leaderboard without finishing the game. As explained in the post linked above, puzzle games are, in some sense, different from arcade games in that you can never just die. Which brings us to the next point: 'endless' mode handles the game over state with a countdown timer, ensuring a convergence toward an end game even in a (theoretically) infinite game mode. But that mode is purposefully designed to be more arcade-like and speedrunnable, versus 'classic' mode which is dedicated to strategic patient thinkers. If timing in games stresses you out, definitely feel free to stick to classic instead of endless mode. Many folks love the timing aspect, but if you've never been into things like blitz chess, it's totally understandable. Thankfully, you'd be happy to hear that the scoring system is purposefully designed to minimize the impact of timing in classic mode for exactly that reason (check out the 'Scoring System' section in the post). p.s. I'm surprised to hear drag and drop is giving you issues on your phone, sorry about that. Not sure any players have had that issue before. Do you mind sharing what device/os/browser you're using, and if you're accessing echochess.com in a fresh browser tab directly?

JJCUBER 3y ago
Similar to them, I also noticed some weird issues on iOS where it would sometimes drag the page when moving pieces and, other times, prevent seeing either the top or bottom portion of the UI. I ended up moving to PC for that reason. I also recall not being able to type in a name for the score at the end (on iOS). One other thing I noticed was that submitting a lower score (at least in endless) still overrides your old one. (My scores went 860.5k -> 314.7k -> 446.9k -> 136.7m, overriding every time.)
- ramly 3y ago
  Question: when you say iOS, do you mean navigating to echochess.com directly on a new window in a browser like safari? The only time I've seen that weird behavior you're describing is when a webview is being loaded for the game from within some other app. The second part sounds like a bug - thanks for the heads-up! I'm still not over how you casually dropped that you reached 136.7 MILLION btw. gg.

NooneAtAll3 3y ago

what's wrong with music on by default? flash games operated like that from the beginning till the end

stevage 3y ago
I guess it's normal in the arcade world, but not in the puzzle world.
- ramly 3y ago
  Actually most well-reviewed puzzle games on Steam and mobile do come with some killer background tracks. The echo chess track has been surprisingly popular - anecdotally, one of the early playtesters mentioned they routinely run echo chess in a background tab while working to get into deep focus mode. Granted, the board game version of the puzzle word does music differently for obvious reasons.