Ummmm... Ecotone, Ecotone... Hmmmm....

Ecotone will make you cry, will give you nightmares, will haunt your shadow, and bring you an experience unlike anything you've experience before. With an extremely unique gameplay style and art-form, Ecotone is unique, yes. But... You will also grow to hate this game, especially if you're not the best at platformers. A single level can take ages, especially the very last one. But as I played the game I enjoyed it more and more. The story is... Interesting. Very interesting indeed.

Anywho.. I'm rambling, essentially what I'm saying is, this is a great game, but requires a steadfast heart and patient mind.

10/10 would see the end again. <3

On the outside, ecotone looks like a typical indie platformer. Each level is physically disconnected from the next and there is no story exposition, no cutscenes. But once a few levels have been played, the game shows how it truly stands out from the crowd: the mechanics can be completely different from one level to the next. All these modifications are inspired from other platformers. Time stopping from Braid, gravity switch from VVVVVV, size changing from Mario/Rayman, and so on. An element that comes back a few times (albeit with different twists) is the mind-bending ability to control two characters at the same time.

As a consequence, it is really hard to get bored while playing this game. It is short enough not to overstay its welcome (5h to 100%) and well worth its asking price. Some mechanics are so fun that I would have loved to see them stay a bit more. However, some rare levels here and there can be really difficult and frustrating. I would not recommend this game to people that are not platformer enthusiasts. Of course it is not as difficult as the later levels of Super Meat Boy or I Wanna Be The Guy, but still, do not think that the cute art style does not hide some tough as nails sections. My real problem with these tough levels is that I believe that they are made harder by the way the character handles. It is fine everywhere but in these specific levels, like the one about jumping in between shadows (the character slides slightly too much after moving) and the final level about jumping in between tight spaces (crouching while jumping is rather counter-intuitive, and hard to perform according to your control scheme). The good thing is that since the mechanics and levels keep changing, anything that is not appreciated does not bother again.

My main criticism is actually quite vain: there are no achievements :(

As this game borrows mechanics from others, it risks being hollow and have no personality on its own. Thankfully it's not the case here, thanks to the overall art style. Unique, great, it feels both eerie and mysterious. I would enjoy to know more about this bizarre world infested by black worms and fireflies. The music supporting the game is great, even if a tad too dramatic for atmospheric levels.

ecotone is a love letter to the whole platformer genre, borrowing mechanics here and there to surprise the player and make each level become a completely new experience. It is cute and pulls its own weight. I recommend it to anyone that enjoys indie platformers.

http://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=684909023

I've really enjoyed my time playing through Ecotone, the creepy-cute artstyle bleeds into every part of every level. The sound design is pretty on point with the varying level background music reinforcing the sombre atmosphere.

What I like most about Ecotone is how it changes up mechanics on each level throughout the game, some of these changes are fairly subtle, but often enough the alterations totally change how you play the game.

This could easily be super confusing but each level is prefaced with a little phrase which gives a clue to what to do for the level and for the most part its intuitive enough anyway. These clues stitch together to give the game what amounts to its story.Whilst the story more or less fits the sombre atmosphere of the game, I'm not sure its executed fantastically, plot arcs that seem to be building feel like they aren't resolved properly, though I suppose that sadly mirrors real life in many cases. Another problem is that sometimes the phrases have to be awkwardly worded in order to both fit the current level, and fit itself into the wider narrative which can be a bit jarring.

Without going into spoiler territory, I found the ending the game goes with very surprising and confusing, I mean I could just be a ♥♥♥♥♥ but it made me feel like I had missed something in terms of the story that seemed to be being told throughout the game. And the bonus epilogue chapters didn't really help in that regard, even though they did deliver more of the off-beat platforming I'd been enjoying.

So far as difficulty goes, Ecotone doesn't require the level of platforming skill and dexterity of, say Super Meat Boy, but its still not exactly a cakewalk either, mercifully death in the game allows you to get back into the action quickly, which may not be unusual in challenging platformers these days but it certainly saves on frustration. The difficulty curve throughout the game is a little strange, there are a couple of early levels where its pretty easy to sabotage yourself early on, requiring a level restart, but beyond those early spikes, the difficulty curve is pretty smooth.

So, if you like platforming and enjoy the artstyle you've been seeing for most of this video, and the idea of a game changing up its mechanics from level to level interests you, then ecotone could well be right up your alley.

If you'd like to watch a more in depth review, I've made a video here

Very good puzzle game with really good ideas!

It is a very interesting platformer, in which every level brings something new, some fresh mechanics, gimmick, etc. Without it, it would probably go boring very soon, but because every next level brings slightly different type of challenge, it keeps being non repetive and fun. This changing of circumstances makes it a quite hard game - almost every new section needs some time to get used to.

Above that, it has atmospheric, disturbing graphics and music, which gives this game orignal appeal. For sure it is worthy of attention.

Art: Great
Music: Great
Story: Interesting
Difficulty: Hard to the point that I eventually gave up because I didn't want to spend my entire night trying to beat one level. Seriously, the "I would reach the stars for him" level is extremely hard and it feels like you have to time your jumps perfectly maybe the "hitbox" is too big? I mean, there's that third enemy that blocks your way by going up and down and sometimes it manages to kill me without having me touching it, it's almost impossible to jump over it even a minimum height. I've managed to do the first jump few times but I always ended up getting killed by the legged monster or the ball one that also blocks the way to the moving platform monster.

So, I guess the game is meant to be a ragegame while being a beautiful game.






ps: THE CHARACTER IS ADORABLE

I don't really know whether to recommend this or not to be honest. It has a fair amount of potential, and considering it's still in early access there's still plenty of opportunity for it to grow into a game worthy of its current price tag. Plus, the devs seem genuinely nice and like they really want to make it a good game, which I think counts for a lot. But as of right now, I can't say I'd want to spend £6 on it.

I have already made a review once for this that was in retrospect was quite harsh, A lot of my criticisms were nitpicky, and I kinda feel bad about making such a negative review based on things like "The shishy sound freaks me out" and "The charizard looks weird, why does it have a mask?"
I still think that there were still valid complaints in there, The controls feel a little slow and clunky at times, There is little to no story, and the whole aesthetic of the game just seems off to me for some reason; though I can't quite figure out specifically what that is. I think it might have something to do with the art style. The lack of detail in parts of it remind me in some ways of a free flash game you might find on Newgrounds, but that is a completely personal statement which you can easily judge on your own merits from all the screenshots above.

The gameplay is not really suited to my tastes, I wouldn't be too surprised if soemone who loves puzzle platformers really recommended it, the puzzley bit is farily on point after all, though the platforming does leave something to be desired. I personally got stuck a bit too easily on a lot of levels. This could either be frustrating when it was down to the controls, or rewarding if it was because of a particularly difficult puzzle. At least, when I completed the puzzle anyway. It would soon jump back to frustration I'd get stuck on the next level as well. I am bad at video games.

In conclusion, if you really like the puzzle part of puzzle platformers; then there's a decent chance you may like this game, maybe wait until it's fully released to be sure. Or don't, I'm a review, not a cop.

P.S. I was actually given this game for free by the devs, as I have no budget for games and they had no reviews. I told you they seemed nice.

P.S.2 What actually is that squishy sound when you jump though? Ew.

Ecotone will make ya think and I love how you learn through having the process's evolve. At first I thought my xbox controller wasn't working, couldn't jump or anything. Yet. Kinda cool seeing a level design and learning how to get around with limited abilities. Ecotone has great atmoshperic fx, music fits really well. Physics with objects is spot on. Love the old school password for each level. Some level's will make ya scratch your head, almost got me with "I feel like going...back" great job.

I'm not a platform gamer, haven't been one since contra on NES. Unfortunately I really don't have much time for games these days, hence the limited play time. With that said, this game looked like it had some interesting concepts, I had a few minutes to spare (downloaded quick as hell so I was playing before I finished filling a glass of water) so I had to give it a shot.

The two things that I would liked to have seen were really small, but when I get to a level where it shows the password at the beginning, maybe put that password somewhere in the pause menu so have access before I exit (this could be normal for platforms, so maybe that one's just me) The second was I ended up using the joystick more than the d-pad because I kept ducking mid air, which slows you down, and I would miss my jump. The funny thing is the joystick seemed more comfortable after a minute or two, so maybe it's a good thing.

I'm not sure why it says here on steam that is "partial controller support" because everything worked perfect for me. This game is cool as hell, keep up the great work dev, looking forward to diving deeper into this bad boy.