Ekkos: a game for the ears

Ekkos is played with your ears. You are standing in a room you cannot see, something is hidden in it, and the only way to find it is to listen.

Tap the screen and you send out an echo. It runs across the room, touches the walls, the pillars, the corners, and comes back one piece at a time. What comes back early is close. What comes back on your left is on your left. After a few echoes the room takes shape in your head, and you walk towards the part of it that answered oddly.

Nothing on screen tells you where you are. The first three rooms draw each echo as it spreads, so the job passes from your eyes to your ears. After that the screen stays dark, and a room lights up again only once you have found what it was hiding.

Headphones are the controller

The game is mixed in stereo for headphones. On a phone speaker the two ears collapse into one: no more left, no more right, no more distance. Put headphones on, sit somewhere quiet, and the room opens up. Unplug them in the middle of a room and the game pauses on its own.

Four gestures, nothing to aim at

The whole screen is the playing surface, so you never have to look for a button. Tap to send an echo. Hold a finger down to walk straight ahead. Slide left or right to turn on the spot. Rest two fingers to pause. Turn sensitivity and swipe distance are yours to set, because no two hands work at the same speed, and the controls page opens onto a room of its own where the four gestures can be practised with nothing to find.

26 rooms, one idea at a time

The first room teaches direction. The next one teaches distance. Then corridors, alcoves, pillars, caves, a maze, a room so wide the echo takes its time coming home. Every room is built by hand around what it sounds like, never around what it looks like. Each one remembers your three best times, and any room you have solved can be walked again. Nothing counts down and there is nothing to lose: you take as long as your ears need.

32 Ekkos to gather, and a place to visit them

What hides in a room is an Ekko, a small sound creature that joins your collection and keeps its place there for good. The sanctuary is a room like any other, except nothing is hidden in it. Send an echo and the two nearest Ekkos answer, each with its own pitch and call. Walk up to one you have never met and it introduces itself. There is nothing to catch and no score.

One room a day, the same for everyone

Once you have solved the first four rooms, a daily room opens. It is the same for every player, and you get one run at it. Find what it hides and your time joins the day's leaderboard, next to your streak, ready to share. Play offline and your time is kept, then sent once you are back.

Built to be played without looking

Blind and low vision players are not a mode added afterwards, they are the players this game is complete for. Nothing you need in order to play is hidden in the picture, so there is nothing to describe back. The menus work with your screen reader, the game speaks its own tutorial as you learn each gesture, and it tells you how to suspend the reader when you start a room, since Ekkos needs the touch gestures for itself.

What this game is not

Not a horror game: no jump scares, no threat, no sound built to frighten you. The tension is simply not knowing where you are yet. Not a race, apart from the daily room, which you choose to run. Not a game with a map you can switch on.

English and French. No account to create, and everything works offline except the daily leaderboard.