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The first couple of days at GDC have been interesting, but not very exciting, so it was nice to spend time with a few upcoming Sony exclusives. One of which is Echochrome, a title I have been looking forward to ever since it was announced at last years E3. I was a little worried it might not hold up to my expectations, but I am happy to say that it is even more addicting than I had hoped.

One of the biggest questions I had was how it was going to play. There are 5 rules to Echochrome: Perspective, Perspective Landing, Perspective Existence, Perspective Absence, and Perspective Jump. Each of these is required to solve the ever more complex puzzles in the world of Echochrome.

The mind bending, perspective flipping puzzles are very intuitive, once you get a grasp of the controls. Each "map" has a number of obstacles that prevent you from reaching the "goal", marked by a stationary version of your character. Using the left and and right analog sticks, you are able to move the world around your character, changing the perspective and hiding the obstacles. What makes Echochrome so impressive is that the complexity of the gameplay is only heightened by the simplicity of it's design.

It sounds confusing, but after watching a number of people pick up and play the game for the first time without any issues, it seems the developers have done everything they can to make it as accessible as possible. For an example, check out the exclusive gameplay video here.

The demo I played had only three levels, but the final game should have over fifty. This build was also the most recent, created specifically for GDC, so minus a few bugs, the full game should be close to completion. The game is still set for release sometime in Spring '08, but there isn't a definitive price yet. When I asked Scott Goryl of SCEA if there would be a PSP version of the game, he stated, "There is currently one scheduled for Japan, but not one for the US".

With it's addictive gameplay, classical soundtrack and simple design, Echochrome will fit perfectly into Sony's expanding casual games library.

Another title I got a few minutes with was flOw for the PSP. Being a huge fan of the incredibly addictive PS3 version, I was interested to see how this translation would hold up.

flOw is one of the new indie Cinderella stories; an online flash game that gets purchased and brought to the mainstream via a big publisher, in this case SCEA. The flash version of the game utilized simple point and click controls that were abandoned for the SIXAXIS, which created a sense of Zen-like gameplay. However, the controls still weren't as responsive as I would have liked. With the PSP port, the developers seem to have taken the best of both builds, using the updated visuals from the PS3, and the analog controls from the flash version.

The interesting thing about flOw is that it makes me think about the seminar I attended last night, "Tetris: The Best/Worst Mobile Game Ever". The speaker, Rick Marazanni argued that games need to have a definitive ending that the player "wins". He made a fairly convincing argument that without a "win state" users aren't playing a game, they are simply performing an activity. Well, when it comes to games like flOw, that are so well crafted and executed, I am more than happy to perform that activity again and again. Depending on the price, I will definitely be willing replay flOw on my PSP.

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