TOKYO – Have you ever used PlayStation Home? No, seriously, have you? In the Bowling Alley arcade, there is a simplistic 2-D spin-off of Echochrome, the PlayStation Network puzzle game. Echoshift is a new PSP game that borrows that game's basic look but adds a mind-bending twist: time travel.
Described as a "time lap action puzzle," Echoshift directs you to walk your little wooden mannequin from one doorway to another. The catch is that you only have about thirty seconds to reach the door and you can't possibly walk straight there due to the obstacles blocking your path.
The solution is to help yourself via time travel. You can use your thirty seconds to progress as far as you can, then travel back in time and reenter the room. The two of you are now in the room and can team up to push buttons, lift objects, or move barriers. Once one of you reaches the door, the stage is cleared.
Check out the screenshot above: the first incarnation is represented by a shadow, while the current playable character is in white. He's able to cross the blue bridge because the first guy put it into place. The fewer passes through time you use to complete the stage, the better your score.
Echoshift offers the additional ability to stop time for three seconds, although none of the preliminary stages I played required that mechanic to reach the exit. I did see plenty of switches, a few enemies that cut time short and one very large box that required multiple mannequins (and a lot of button tapping) to toss aside. You may have played some free Flash games on the web with a similar premise, such as Cursor-10. Still, as a sucker for time travel and puzzle games, I welcome this genre with open arms.
Echoshift is coming to Japan on November 1 as both a digital download and on UMD.
Image courtesy Sony
