Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll is a must-play combatless metroidvania for Playdate

I’ve been finding myself consistently impressed by the experiences developers have managed to cram into the Playdate. It’s not that I expected little of the handheld and its potential offerings when I first impulsively pre-ordered it way back when, but I guess I didn’t really know what to expect beyond the crank-focused games Panic first teased ahead of its release, which seemed geared toward short bursts of play. Over the past few months, I've played lots of those and thoroughly enjoyed them, but I’ve also spent hours solving puzzles and exploring intricate maps in games with a surprising amount of substance. Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll, which recently came to the Playdate Catalog, may be one of the best yet.

Created by developer bumbleborn, Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll is a metroidvania, but don’t let that scare you off if combat isn’t your thing; it’s non-violent, putting the emphasis instead on tricky platforming, puzzles and finding your way around sprawling caverns. The map feels huge for a Playdate game — there over 250 rooms spread between its four levels, according to the developer.

In Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll, a sickness known as the Blight threatened to wipe out all life, forcing the inhabitants of three kingdoms to escape underground. Humans live on the bottom-most level, in a kingdom called Bottomrock. As the child protagonist of the game, you’re on a mission to deliver a scroll to The Archives, requiring you journey through the somewhat perilous Kingdoms Three. It’s a world that holds a lot of secrets, and you’ll have to interact with certain elements of the environment in unexpected ways in order to move forward or access seemingly inaccessible items.

But there’s a kind of haunting sereneness to it all, even with its challenging moments. The music sets just the right atmosphere, and visually, Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll is stunning. The artwork is so crisp down to the tiniest details, and I just love the style of it all. Larger characters especially — like the frog prince whose belly you can bounce on — really come to life. Between the music, the art, the lore and just the overall vibes, Echo: The Oracle’s Scroll completely drew me in. If there’s one Playdate game you should pick up right now, it’s this.