echoshift first impressions

echoshift takes you on a puzzling journey of addictive gameplay that guarantees you'll be coming back for more. Intrigued?

Echoshift is a wonderfully unique game. Taking its cue from echochrome, this PSP title offers puzzle-based gameplay in a refreshingly different manner that's both visually appealing and addictively challenging. Its screenshots may tantalisingly leave you wondering what you have to do - yet its gameplay has you understanding immediately...

Re-record not fade away

Echoshift manipulates the concept of time to let you solve its puzzles. At the start of each stage, you have to steer your mannequin figure to an exit at the other end of the level. Stopping you are a number of different obstacles, such as colour coded doors that only open when the corresponding switch is pressed, giant cubes that fall from the sky and have to be pressed off by hammering one of the PSP system's buttons before you progress, and more.

It may seem like a simple task to overcome these little challenges - however, you're under a strict time limit which will inevitably see you fail on your first attempt. At that point echoshift stays true to its name, and rewinds the action back so you can try again, with one brilliant difference - your previous attempt at the level is replayed at the same time as your current one, so your actions in your preceding try affect your current efforts.

Everything you did before is mimicked by a shadow mannequin. The more times you repeat the stage, the more of these echoes are created, meaning each time you replay the stage the closer you'll get to your goal as you co-operate with your past selves to solve puzzles in the present.

An old time classic

It's great fun to watch several shadows all simultaneously roaming around the stages, each performing a task that will help your current mannequin complete the level - and the fast flowing gameplay is designed to be enjoyed in swift bites which keeps the stages engaging despite repeat plays. And like echochrome, the inclusion of classical music creates the perfect atmosphere for you to get lost in.

echoshift is a novel spin on the puzzle genre with a lot of potential to be unlocked thanks to its time changing gameplay and the ability to download extra stages online. Make sure you keep checking back on eu.playstation.com time and time again for this terrific temporal teaser.