Wild New Steam Game Dares You To Break Every Rule — and Every Level
Overview & Key Takeaways
Echobreaker is a futuristic indie game where you complete courses as fast as possible, but then find a way to beat your own time by breaking the rules
Many games across various genres have explored speed as a concept in one way or another. Racing games like Forza Horizon 6 make it the byproduct of an intimate relationship between driver and car. In the Guitar Hero and Pump It Up! series, speed signifies proficiency, while in action RPGs in the style of Path of Exile 2, it translates into damage. But in Echobreaker, speed is the means to freedom.
Our role in Echobreaker (available on Windows PC only) is that of a tester tasked with pushing the limits of a mechanical suit that allows you to run at superhuman speed. In every stage, you race along a course that looks like part of a high-tech lab in a decontextualized future, with the goal of crossing the finish line as quickly as possible. Depending on your time, you receive one of the three medals, and obtaining the highest ones is the condition to unlock more courses. In some stages, you have specific objectives, like learning to use one of the weapons or walk on walls. But on top of everything else, your goal in Echobreaker is to run — as fast as you possibly can.
Running is not only a matter of holding the left stick and taking clean turns, though. While you try to control your character running at cybernetic speed, you must deal with annoying robots as well as the most terrible enemy in the game: the race track. It features platforms and ramps that force you to land perfect jumps, otherwise you are bound to lose precious milliseconds getting back on track. The pink boost segments that intermittently cover the floor can be a blessing or a curse. The track's edge, from which you can fall to your death, is a looming threat that haunts you throughout every run.
Trying to master any of the race tracks in Echobreaker is a frustrating experience. By putting us in control of a character running at high speed along a narrow path where every mistake is punished, Echobreaker accepts nothing less than perfection. I constantly restarted runs whenever I missed the exact point where I needed to jump from a platform, since one wrong turn is enough to know that a run was doomed, and it was time to try again. It's infuriating. However, despite the frustration, I started to enjoy my time with Echobreaker once I understood that the game was daring me to break its own rules.
Echobreaker's design splits the experience of playing it into two distinct phases. The first is when you take a stab at each stage. You do your best to complete all the available levels for the first time, while getting the gist of using the boost system and the different weapons. The second moment begins once you have spent enough time with the game to unlock most of the stages. After getting your best time in each run, you're faced with the realization that, in order to progress even further and unlock the final stages, you must be faster. You may wonder how the hell you're supposed to do that, and the answer is plain disobedience.
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Image: Upstream Arcade/Weekend Games
Image: Upstream Arcade/Weekend Games
Image: Upstream Arcade/Weekend Games
When you start playing Echobreaker, you blindly follow the rules of the game's tyrannical level design. If the path goes forward, you go forward. If a wall indicates that you should turn left, you mindlessly obey it. If there's a track, it should be followed, right?
Actually, no. The rules represented by the race track limit you, and the only way to achieve better times is to break those rules. Instead of running along a U-turn, you can use a boost stack to jump from one side to the other and save time. When facing a wall, rather than taking the route it suggests, you can break it using the final attack of your giga sword and create a new path.
Echobreaker reminds us that we jump into conclusions too easily when starting a game. We assume that what we see on the screen determines an unquestionable truth about that digital world — and ourselves. We forget that many rules are actually lies: coherent but ultimately fictional ideas that we agree to follow.
In Echobreaker, respecting the rules imposed upon you by the level design will take you to the final line within a good time, but one that you can't surpass if you keep following them. Echobreaker pushes you into thinking on how you can become faster, and by doing so it inspires you to commit a creative act of rebellion.
