DevLog | Speed & Sacrifice

We wanted to take a moment to say thank you to everyone who's played the Echobreaker demo so far, especially those who have posted feedback in the Steam forums. We're also really pleased to see we've reached 4000 wishlists!

For this DevLog we wanted to talk a little more about one of the central ideas behind the game:

Speed has a cost.

Sacrificing an Echo

In Echobreaker, Echoes are tied directly to your survivability, your route options, and your ability to push yourself to the limit.

The idea behind it was to add a bit of more strategic thinking beyond simply finding the fastest route. When you sacrifice an Echo, you make a deliberate trade. You give up your safety net in exchange for speed. It might help you perform a huge jump across a critical gap, or slowing time to take down enemies to unlock a speed boost.

We didn't set out to make a game where it was just a simple 'Press button to go faster'. We wanted something to give you a bit more pressure than that.

The nice part of that is that it helped us design the levels! It's one thing to take the 'safe' path through a level, but it helped us continually ask the question 'What could we add here if you wanted to go even faster?'

That Risk vs. Reward gameplay is something we found pretty enticing, especially because it helps people push themselves even further when aiming for that perfect time.

Demo Feedback

Like we said at the start, we're reflecting on the demo feedback and are going to be making a few changes to make the experience smoother. We're also cooking some other things that might challenge you.

Please keep dropping your feedback in the Steam discussions, we really do read it, and even respond!

And if you've played the demo, you should take a look at that timer and think:

"I can go faster."

-- Upstream Arcade