Once a week, Apple selects the best game in the App Store. It becomes free for the next seven days. This time, Dark Echo, a horror puzzle game from the Canadian studio RAC7 Games, has been announced as such a game.
There is no character in the game as such, instead there are conditional images of shoes and sound waves. The hero produces them when he walks, they are his only way of orientation in space. By the way they are refracted, the player can determine what is ahead. If the waves turn red, then the character is waiting for death.
The levels are designed as chapters – they have numbers and names that add tension in themselves: “Blindness”, “Fear”, “Escape”.
The extremely concise visual design of the game is complemented by music – it is a booming and disturbing “white noise” that shades the echo of the hero’s steps. If the character is in danger, then the growling of an invisible monster or the buzzing of insects is added to the background.
There are no monsters or graphic scenes of violence in the game. If the character is overtaken by a monster, the player hears a scream and sees the screen turn red. That’s all. Dark Echo makes a bet on the rich imagination of the player: the danger that you don’t see scares you the most.
The game launched on iOS on February 4 and since its launch has more or less consistently occupied a place in the top hundred most downloaded games in the American App Store in the category “Puzzles”. Ficher brought her into the top ten.
The minimalistic aesthetics of Dark Echo brings to mind the Proto Raider game, which we wrote about last week. The example of these two projects once again confirms that in order to please Apple, you need to give something extremely extraordinary in terms of both graphics and gameplay. Three-in-a-row or casual bagel – will not pass.
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RAC7 Games is an independent team of two developers. Located in Vancouver.