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)
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)