i simply cannot recommend echo as much as i would like to due to its glaring structural flaws. there are many clear moments of brilliance here but it's held together by hours of mindless character interactions that honestly result in nothing meaningful. for a visual novel the writing is often lackluster, and while the moments of actual horror are fairly great, it doesn't make up for the rest of the game. there are only really a few character moments that i can say i actually enjoyed and cared for, otherwise i could really just cut out everything except the "horror". i still don't really get the symbolism either

Well…
Carl: It is the route that I liked the least, it is very stressful and I can understand that that is the intention but the ending is not satisfactory, you can tell that it was the first route they did, making it look low quality at times.

Jenna: I enjoyed this one more and in this route we do sympathize more with Jenna and understand her points of view, what I didn't like was that it won't contribute anything new and will try to conclude many loose ends feeling rushed, it is entertaining but not as shocking as the others.

tj: poor him, the people who first chose the cat did not expect it, here he theorized that Chase's true personality is shown here and what he is capable of committing the same atrocious acts (if we assume that it was he who killed to Sydney).

flynn: this route is crazy, compared to jenna's route here there are too many themes but it is well balanced so that the ending leaves you in shock, in the epilogue seeing Chase at the most depressing point of all the routes is very melancholic and poetic, an otter without soul and identity.

Leo: this is my favorite, it is the first one I chose when I played it and the one that impacted me personally, this game caught me by surprise making the same mistake in Leo's bad ending, accepting that we will not be able to help a loved one with our love and having to abandon it so it doesn't do more damage, it hurts.

Yeah a lot of text...

It's just Higurashi for furries.

I've played one route and that's really all I'm willing to give this game. It's not very good. I'm not super familiar with furry culture or media, but the sense that I got from all the main characters is that they're probably popular Archetypes for furry characters -- they're very recognizably written like Archetypes with tweaks. It's a very anime style of writing, and one I generally think is bad, because people (or animals, in the case of this game? not sure on the preferred nominative conventions here) are not just variations on themes, even if we often group ourselves together that way on the internet.

I didn't particularly like any of the main cast, which isn't really a dealbreaker -- you can have a cast of shitty characters and be engaging and entertaining all the same. Unfortunately, I didn't really find the main characters compelling at all either. I don't know why they were so poorly constructed, given that the secondary characters were vastly more interesting -- clearly the authors of this VN are capable of good character writing.

As it so happens, this is not the only indie western VN set in a small town with a quirky and diverse ensemble cast that quickly turns to psychological horror that I've played. Scarlet Hollow does the same thing (admittedly, without the furry romance, so that might be a dealbreaker for the target audience here) far more competently, which is probably why my feelings towards this game are so negative. I know this game could have been great! I've seen another game just like it pull it off!

Despite my disappointment, I'm glad I gave this a shot. It had a couple of legitimately strong bits, one of the songs sounds straight out of 999 (/pos), and it was fairly quick to go through a single route, so I don't feel like my time was substantially wasted.

Most games I play I usually know more than I should before going in. I've watched let's plays of it, seen reviews, sometimes I'd already experienced everything the game has second-hand before going in myself. I don't think I even read the itch.io description of Echo before I downloaded it.

I probably had close to the perfect possible experience, I was at the perfect age, doing okay but not great mentally, and I had absolutely no expectations whatsoever. The reason I picked it up was to play it 'ironically,' and I really did think this was just going to be a dating sim, because what else could a visual novel even be? I was playing with the mindset that the end-goal was seeing whichever character I picked getting naked, despite the fact that basically everything was telling me otherwise.

I don't think there was a particular moment when it hit me, it just slowly washed over me that there was something wrong. Something was fucked. And then it hit me anyway. After every ending I immediately went back to re-read parts of it to figure out what the fuck just happened. I already knew what happened, I just couldn't comprehend my feelings or the fact that they were triggered by this default ren'py UI 'game' I downloaded for free on a whim. My assumptions had been turned one me, expectations subverted, I was physically shaking. DDLC could never.

It was one of the few times in recent memory that I felt a primal compulsion to talk to someone about a piece of media, about what I had seen and felt, about the fact that it was this of all things that left me so disturbed in a beautiful way. Although of course I couldn't mention that what I played was a gay furry visual novel, that would be mortifying. Describing something with those four words is like a hex that repels almost all who hear it. Maybe that's for the best, because being one of those people who wasn't repelled made me feel even more like this was something special just for me to find.

I will say the one thing that prevents you from being able to show the game off is that presentation-wise it is as barebones as it gets without just being bad. It got way better with the updates that added extra CGs and sprites (I first played when Kudzu's reaction to everything from a pleasant conversation to a death threat was " ,:^l ") Like, of the best scenes, some are enhanced by the CGs and some take place on a completely black screen. And the sound design, with the exception of the original music tracks that I all really like, is mostly stock and not all that effective (Me and the boys jamming to trailsteps.ogg while listening to neutral by Audioblocks). This is all honestly fine. They needed to allocate limited resources on a Patreon-funded budget and they did that well. However, all of many spelling and grammar mistakes are pretty hard to ignore. It's a novel (with visuals) -the words being correct are kind of important. Also why are most of the ellipses only two dots what's up with that why is that..

I liked it. And the extent to which I liked it was so surprising to me that it made me love it.

(Completed - I got all the endings and I'm pretty sure I read all the dialogue)

After playing this game. I failed to realize until after playing, how it effected me emotionally. Especially Leo's route. This game is not a horror game. It is more than that. It's about overcoming past trauma and moving on. It's about how someone's death can break apart even the strongest of bonds. That's what really got me. You never see that in VNs anywhere, this visual novel is unique.

The amount of care and thought that went into the storytelling and immersion of this game. Lei is especially a hard topic for me because of my past relationships, it focuses more on moving on and finding closure in an abruptly ended relationship. When Chase abruptly broke up with Leo over how he reacted to a prank about Chase cheating on him, I felt nothing but anger and disappointment in Chase for possibly ruining the best thing in his life.

This outlines that even when you have a strong bond with your partner, one thing is just enough to cause permanent damage. The soundtracks still make me cry. The way they are grafted into the game makes it so you can feel the same emotions that the characters are. It makes you empathetic towards what happened, and instills this longing for closure alongside the main cast. The way they convey the story is grafted in such a way that it tells a deeper story than in just the main game.

All-in-all I really recommend playing this game if you haven't already. This is the most incredible thing I've read thus far and am hoping that this story is expanded on further in the future. But as for right now. Let's just keep it the way it is.... A masterpiece.

Me: Mom, can I have Higurashi?

Mom: No, we have Higurashi at home.

Higurashi at home:

On a more serious note, this and VA-11-Hall-A might be the only Original English Language Visual Novels I consider to be really good and/or worth experiencing. Reading a furry VN in my college did get me some weird looks from other students though lol, will probably write an actual review in the future but for now, just know it's a cool horror-drama VN.

I don't even know where to begin LMAO, Echo is truly one of a kind, a culmination of passion throughout the years that feels like a genuine dialogue between the writer and the reader. I was immediately drawn to Echo's furries and desert imagery, two of my favorite things, and I left feeling like I just had a spiritual experience.

This visual novel is not without its flaws, as its earliest developed portions suffer heavily from unfocused writing (Carl's route in particular feels strikingly out of place from the rest of the routes), but overall it's an unforgettable story. Pardon the fur, but Echo's characters are some of the most human and sincere I've come across in writing. When I look at Leo, Jenna, and the rest of the gang, I see a little bit of the people around me in them, and sometimes even myself for better or worse.

The emotions felt here are some of the strongest I've come across in writing. I could physically feel the tension whenever arguments arose between the cast, and the horror had me so stressed at times I had to leave my desk. There isn't always a happy ending to be found here, but real life doesn't offer many such a relief. But life isn't about the endings, it's the journeys we take and the people who join along with us. The same could be said about Echo.

I was lucky to have stumbled upon this game through a random comment back in 2018. At the time, I was going through a rough point in my life, and Echo's builds gave me a lot to look forward to and keep my mind off the pain. I could go on and on about this VN, but in the end this is a story that'll stick with me forever. 💕

Spent more than 2 months reading a gay furry silent hill 2/twin peaks/some stephen king shit like It or something vibes but with emphasis on gay furries visual novel almost the size of war and peace and actually enjoyed it for the most part.
What's going to be my next wonderful and very smart decision? Can't wait to find out

Also wish there was more spooky visual stuff like in Jenna's route, I loved how they did the thing you know the one

And also Carl is a buddy and also a pal




and Chase please stop trying to fuck all of your childhood friends, that's NOT proper behavior, even if you're feeling a bit cray

I tried this out a few years ago and bounced off it. The setting seemed dreary and the cast kinda unpleasant. It finally clicked for me after getting an introduction to the town via the first couple of hours of The Smoke Room. I was talking to someone looking for VN recs and they said that TSR was too scary for them, so I played through it long enough to get an idea of the the series' vibe.

That was enough to return to Echo with fresh and more forgiving eyes. It paid off! The writing has problems with malapropisms, odd phrasings, occasional misspellings, and an idea of life in a hot climate that seems untouched by personal experience, but the imaginative work that the writing is doing elevates it to something special.