Tiny Echo

Tiny Echo is a very small, maybe 1-3 hour long game (depending how much time you spend ogling at the amazing art). It's made by the studio Might and Delight, which has also developed the Shelter games.

Their own website says:

 "We are a small video game studio that hopes to bring artistic and carefully crafted interactive experiences to the market. We always try to value the integrity of our ideas and are constantly trying to reinvent both the genres we work with as well as our graphical expression."

You are Emi, a message courier in a world of spirit-like creatures. It's like a village of tiny spirits living in the miniature world of their own. You point and click your way through the breathtaking scenery to deliver letters to the inhabitants. All the spirits have some special quirks and you need to do small puzzles to get to them or to get their attention. Sometimes you help them with things, or just sit down to drink tea in their company.

 What makes the game a bit different story-wise is that there is no dialogue or text. The art and sound design guide you. The soundtrack and overall audio environment create beautiful and immersive little moments. Some of the sounds are really haunting and even creepy, but the overall tone is friendly and adventurous and also dreamlike. Tiny Echo is one of those games that make you really pay attention to the sound environment. You will definitely appreciate how much a good sound design can enrich a game experience. When you don't have any dialogue to focus on, you start picking up on all the tiniest sounds. Like small whistles of air or weird animal sounds coming from afar. You notice how tiny Emi's footstep sounds are and then start thinking about all the different ground materials you hear. You also pick up on everything in the minimalist character art. Smallest of sounds and gestures in animations give away so much.

The game sets up a simple story for the letters in the beginning in a short cutscene and also ends it with one. I don't want to spoil it, but it kind of tells us what the letters are and what the spirits do. It does it without underlining anything too much, but gives the player some kind of a base for the game. You quickly understand the basics of the story, delivering the letters and solving small puzzles. You get this sense of community when helping the spirits in different ways. The small acts of kindness that can carry a long way. And that is the theme in the ending scene too.

Overall the game is not so focused on the story, but seeing and interacting with the spirits. It makes you wonder about them and their personalities and what they do. It's a game of discovery and looking just briefly into a small beautiful hidden world. The main focus, meeting with the different kinds of creatures, flows nicely.  It's definitely a more atmospheric game, a bit like a visual interactive story. And I really, really love the art. It's so beautiful I almost cried while playing it, hah.

The spirits are just doing their spirit things, some that are very mundane (washing dishes in a stream) and some that are more spirit-like things (just chilling in a clay pot, i dunno) Then you get these small cutscenes with the spirits when you deliver a message. I feel like you get to glimpse to the personality of the receiver during it. The music gets intense and the spirit wakes up from this trance-like state to accept the letter. The art style gives them a lot of character too. The background has some cute detailed animation and you can interact with some of them. And with all the residents too. The game uses also a few simple graphical symbols to guide the player. You could say that the overall style and feel of the art is very Ghibli-like.

Might and Delight's Shelter games are about animals taking care of their offspring and trying to survive in the wild while showing the brutal side of it too. I think Tiny Echo has also a bit of these melancholic undertones, even though the overall atmosphere is dreamy and cheerful.

I really enjoy small, different looking games that don't bombard all your senses at the same time. I think Tiny Echo is a great example of making small games that are focused on the atmosphere with very small stories and messages. It's definitely not for everyone, especially if you want a lot of interaction from your game. But if you love Ghibli movie backgrounds and all those small mystical critters running around in them then you might like this.

Screenshots are from http://mightanddelight.com/tinyecho/