Echochrome

Echochrome requires the player to control a moving character—which resembles an articulated wooden artist's mannequin—to visit, in any order, particular locations on the surfaces of collections of three-dimensional shapes. The objectives are marked by shadows ("echoes") of the moving character. When the last marked position has been visited, one last echo appears, which the player must reach to finish the level: scoring is simply a matter of timing completion of each level (or a course containing several levels).

However, the character cannot be directly controlled by the player: it moves autonomously, following a path along the surface of each shape in a manner that keeps the path's boundary on the character's left (that is, in order of preference, turning left, proceeding straight ahead, turning right, or turning back on itself).

The game was developed primarily by Will, a company located in Saitama. It was produced under Sony's Game Yaroze program, which had previously launched Devil Dice and the Doko Demo Issyo series. The game was first announced at E3 2007. It was released in Japan on March 19, 2008, on UMD and for download on the PlayStation Store, with a demo released on the Japanese PlayStation Network on March 6, 2008.

The North American release of Echochrome is only available on the PlayStation Network. A demo was released in North America on April 24, 2008. It was followed by the full version on May 1, 2008. Updates that rotate the set of user-created levels occur periodically.

Echochrome received "generally favorable" reviews according to review aggregator platform Metacritic. The game's minimalistic presentation, originality, and level design were cited as its strongest aspects. In 2008, IGN awarded the game for Best Innovative Design, and nominated it for Best Artistic Design, Best New IP, Best Puzzle.GameSpot nominated the game for Best Original Game Mechanic in their Best of 2008.