Lost Echo Review: A story driven adventure game with plenty of mysteries to solve

Lost Echo was released in the Windows Phone Store last week after having a fair amount of success over on iOS. Lost Echo is an adventure game that has you searching for your girlfriend, Chloe, who vanishes before your very eyes.
The game has quality, detailed graphics and a simple user interface to guide through the game. In many ways game plays out much like a scavenger hunt for clues and pieces of the puzzle that will eventually solve the mystery of Chloe's disappearance. Lost Echo by no means is a fast-paced adventure game but if you like story driven adventures, it may be worth the price of admission.
The disappearance of Chloe
The design of Lost Echo's main menu is simple with options to continue a game, start a new game or load a previously saved game. You also have options to access the game's settings, view the credits and quit the game. Lost Echo's settings cover your Ram usage (high or low) which will impact your graphics level and overall gaming performance.
Lost Echo has two gaming modes, casual and normal modes. Casual mode offers more game play guidance and puzzles are more simplified. Normal mode assumes you have experience with adventure games with less guidance and more challenging puzzles/mysteries to solve.
The story starts out with your character (Greg) meeting his girlfriend (Chloe) for ice cream at the local cafe. The first several minutes of the story play out to give you a feel for the controls of the game. You will have dialog options to guide the story and movement is done by a simple tap of the screen in the direction you want to go.
As this introduction comes to an end, Chloe is engulfed in a white light and disappears. As she vanishes, an explosion rocks the cafe and you find yourself in a hospital recovering from your injuries. When you ask about Chloe, it is as if she never existed. There is some hint by the doctors that you may have suffered a brain injury but it all feels as though a cover-up over Chloe's disappearance.
The remainder of the game you search for clues to help you find Chloe and understand what happened.
Straightforward touch interface
Game play with Lost Echo takes full advantage of your Windows Phone touch screen. Movement is done by tapping the area you want to move to (double tap to run) and when you find something worth inspecting closer, just tap on the object. A city map is available when you need to jump from one area of the city to another.
Dialog screens will pop-up at the bottom of the screen and cover thoughts your character has as well as conversations with other game characters. There will be times during the game where you will have the option to steer the direction of the conversation. Don't worry though, if you choose the wrong direction the game will often let you give the other dialog choices a try.
And it's not all small talk with Lost Echo, there are computers to interface with to search for clues, dreams to interpret, email to check and code that will need decrypting. All in an effort to find Chloe.
Your player inventory is accessible by tapping the cube that sits in the upper right corner of the screen and tapping an item puts it into play. There will be times during the story that you'll have to interact with these objects to fix them, inspect them further or deliver them to other game characters.
If you need a hint or want to save your gaming progress, just tap the Windows Phone Back Button to pull up these options. The hints are brief and will get you pointed in the right direction if you've forgotten your current gaming task.
Overall Impression
Lost Echo does have a lot going for it. You have a compelling story line, easy user interface and decent graphics. However, if you are looking for a fast-paced action adventure game, Lost Echo isn't going to be the game for you.
Game play relies more on your powers of observation and deduction than how fast you can tap the screen. Lost Echo is a time consuming, lengthy game with a pace that tends to crawl along at times. While you can tap the dialog screens to zip through conversations, you do so with a risk of missing clues that will help you down the road.
By no means is Lost Echo a bad game for your Windows Phone. I just think it's a game style that may not appeal to everyone. Your progress can be saved so if you only have a few minutes to play Lost Echo, you can always return where you left off. The only concern is that you may not get much accomplished in just a few minutes of game play. The game plays more like a console game than a mobile game, which isn't necessarily a bad thing.
The game does have a slight addictive quality about it and the more I played Lost Echo, the more it grew on me. However, Lost Echo is better suited for longer spurts of time (15 minutes or longer) to make decent progress in finding Chloe. The biggest downside to Lost Echo is the lack of a trial version, which by itself will turn many away from the game. The developer could have easily offered a trial version that allowed gamers to play up until Chloe disappears to give them a feel for game play.
Lost Echo is a nicely drawn up, challenging, time-consuming Windows Phone game. It is not going to appeal to everyone but if you give the game a chance, you may be surprised how much you like it. But without a trial version, I can see many not giving it that chance.
- Lost Echo - Windows Phone 8 - $2.99 - Store Link
*Note: Lost Echo is available for low-memory devices but does take a little more time to load. Nothing as painful as a root canal but noticeably slower than on devices with 1GB of RAM.
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George is the Reviews Editor at Windows Central, concentrating on Windows 10 PC and Mobile apps. He's been a supporter of the platform since the days of Windows CE and uses his current Windows 10 Mobile phone daily to keep up with life and enjoy a game during down time.
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Downloaded. Enjoying playing this game. Excellent story, nifty graphics. It doesn't have much action as its an adventure based game. Love the background music it plays, specially during suspense moments. It tests the player's patience initially though ;)
P.S: I played this game earlier in my friend's iPhone but surprising it works smoothly in my 520 as much as his! -
Yep needed a trial
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Can anyone please tell me how to activate wpcentral notifications in the action centre??
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In WPC app, goto settings > live tile > turn on toast notifications... Make sure WPC app is allowed to run in background
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You first need to activate notifications in the WPcentral app options. Once that's done wait for your first notification to pop, and then WPcentral will be available in the notification center options.
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Thank you bro I have adjusted live tiles but still notifications aren't coming in the action centre
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Are you receiving notifications but they don't get written in the notification center or are you not getting notifications at all? If you get notifications, then go on your phone settings, in Notifications+Actions, and there you'll find WPcentral and you can adjust its notification center settings. If you're not getting notifications at all, then maybe try disabling notifications and turning them on again in the app settings to see if it solves the problem.
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Not solved bro
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Just to make sure, what type of notifications are you waiting for? Because the app only gives notifications for new articles posted, not for replies to comments you've posted. So I just want to make sure you're aware of that. If what you wanted was only notifications for new articles and you've made sur that Live Tile and Toast Notifications (toast needs to be active in the app even if you don't want toast notifications or it won't get registered in the notification center. You can later disable toasts from the notification center settings) are active in your WPcentral options then... I don't know. Maybe try reinstalling the app, there might be a bug somewhere.
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Welcome for the tip =(
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Love the low memory devices support :)
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Agree!
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I loooove the slow games. Machinarium, Artifex Mundi games, and now this one. And for once, my Android friend (who also love slow puzzle/hidden object games) did not have this game, weeee.
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Have you played the "Delight games" games? Those games are small yet story driven and addicting!
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Thnx for the tip. I was a great fan of the Wizards Choice, among the best story in a game. Tried Zombie high and hated it and been holding off since then.
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No problem!
LOL! Same here!!!
But I do love Detective's Choice as well. Hope they come up with Volume 2 soon.... -
I'm enjoying it, reminds me of classic point and click titles which there should be a jewel of a lot more of on touch based interfaces as they are perfectly suited. I much prefer this style of adventure to the hidden object games that have plagued the genre.
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Yeah... Kinda first parts of Silent Hill... Except that it had horror as well
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Great to see this game coming to WP even before android. Is it because no one will be buying this on android (piracy)?
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Loving this game.I love adventures.
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I can't get into these kinds of games. Cool graphics though.
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The game doesn't have a trial so I can't be sure if the game will be fun to play, But after reading the review I don't think the game is for me.
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This game looks really interesting. I saw it the other day but didn't think that it was so good. Now that I see in-depth article. I might just try it out. It looks really fun.
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2 things to note: - Official walktrough will get you stuck so patience is in order - Game sucks battery like it's free on my 920... make you you have a ways to recharge trough the day if you're planning to spend any extra time with this game...
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I'm playing the game currently. It really is fun. Highly recommended. Now if we can get more "old school" point and click adventures that would be awesome... As of now we only have Kaptain Brawe: A Brawe New World representing old school adventure... (that was fun as well with trial but boy, towards the end I don't see anyone finishing it without hint or walktrugh...) Now if we can get broken sword and yestarday ported from Android... o well...
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Yes RAM 512
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Is this a universal game
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Just finished the game. I think I didn't understand the ending. Is there any place to read about what happened? To get the full picture? Great game, I encourage everybody to buy it.
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Just found the dev blog. Thnx for taking the time to explain things. I hope the expansion comes to WP also.
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It will. We're aiming for a simultaneous release of the epilogue (Lost Echo: Resonance as we call it) on all platforms. With that said, we still have work to do on it, so we don't have a target release date yet.
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Releasing on all 3 platforms the same time there is no need to promise me a date. We WP user will be on the wagon and that's good enough for me. Now, if you take a break and update your Facebook page also, and every other place that needs to know WP version is alive, more people might buy it :) Just the info on about the game on Facebook is missing information that WP users can also enjoy your great game. It's maybe fixed already, if not, it's a tip. :) Happy coding
/ eager fan. -
Thanks, I forgot to update the about info on our facebook page! In other news, we just updated Lost Echo to include a trial mode. After popular demand, we really had no choice :D
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Love these type games. Looks good too. Take my money!