The much lauded Echo VR might no longer be with us, but one of its innovations is living on in a new wave of VR games.
Update (March 12th, 2024): Added more games to document the growing trend of arm-locomotion in VR games.
In the Beginning
Echo VR (and its single-player counterpart, Lone Echo) were among the first major VR games to build a game around a virtual movement system based entirely on the player’s arm movement. While most VR games used (and continue to use) thumbsticks to allow players to glide around on their feet, the Echo games actually gave players no control over their feet, and instead had them floating around exclusively in zero-G environments with only their hands to push and pull themselves around the game space.
Image courtesy Meta, Ready at Dawn
While other early VR games definitely contributed to the idea of arm-based movement rather than sliding thumbstick movement (shout-out to Lucid TripsClimbey, Sprint Vector and many more), the Echo games did a lot of heavy lifting to popularize this novel locomotion concept.
And from there, the idea has grown and evolved.
Evolution and Growth
Gorilla Tag (2021), whose creator specifically says he was inspired by Echo VR, has become one of VR’s most popular games, bringing its spin on arm-based locomotion to a much wider audience. With that exposure, more and more players are learning how this particular way of moving in VR can be fun, making them more likely to try games with similar mechanics.
Image courtesy Another Axiom
And this goes far beyond the smattering of Gorilla Tag clones you can find on Steam.
Nock (2022) went several steps further with a much faster type of sliding and gliding arm movement, while also weaving in bows and arrows, challenging players to both navigate and shoot with their hands in a continuous flow.
Space Ball (2023) took the Gorilla Tag movement and fused it with a Rocket League style game, letting players bound around the arena and launch themselves to dunk a huge ball into a hoop.
It’s not just multiplayer games either. Arm-based locomotion systems have popped up in single player adventures like Phantom Covert Ops (2020), which had a very literal take on arm-movement in VR—asking players to paddle themselves around in a covert kayak. It sounds silly on the surface, but there’s no doubt the game’s arm-based movement was both unique and successful.
Image courtesy nDreams
In 2023 we saw more arm-based movement games like No More Rainbows, Toss!, and Outta Hand. If you peruse the reviews of these games, you find a common theme of advice from reviewers: ‘if you liked Gorilla Tag, check this out!’. Clearly the players enjoying these games want more like them, with the desired similarity being the use of arms for movement.
Moving into 2024, mech brawler Underdogs has taken the concept in a different direction; players brawl it out in a mech while using their arms to pull themselves around the arena. So far the game has been well received, with exceptional user reviews on both Quest and Steam.
Another recent entry into the arm locomotion genre is Stilt, recently released on Quest (App Lab), PSVR 2, and PC VR. This game gives players springy arms—with a similar aesthetic to Nintendo’s ARMS (2017)—but adds extra abilities to the arms like a grappling hook, rocket, and gliding capability to extend traversal distances. And let’s be honest, those wiggly arms just look like a lot of fun.
Full Circle
Image courtesy Ready At Dawn
And in a truly full-circle moment, the creators of Gorilla Tag (which were inspired by Echo VR) are building a spiritual successor to Echo VR. Currently codenamed ‘Project A2’, the game will revisit arm-based movement in zero-G in an effort to revive the very game that popularized arm-based movement to so many in the first place.
It’s apparent that VR developers and players alike are beginning to find that controlling your arms with… your arms, is much more engaging than controlling your legs with… a thumbstick. I have a feeling that this new wave of games built entirely around arm-based movement is here to stay. The question on my mind is if they will remain as their own genre within VR, or perhaps come to define the way movement works in most VR games.
Ready at Dawn’s Lone Echo 2 took home both VR-focused awards at yesterday’s 25th Annual D.I.C.E. Awards.
The sci-fi epic won both in Technical Achievement and overall Game of the Year in the two ‘Immersive Reality’ categories. For Game of the Year, Lone Echo 2 beat rivals including Demeo (which was awarded UploadVR’s own Game of the Year award), I Expect You To Die 2, Resident Evil 4 VR and Song in the Smoke. That’s a tough category for sure.
Lone Echo 2 Wins Big At DICE Awards
“Really the degree to which the original Lone Echo resonated with players as a world and characters and story that was so immersive and deeply personal was really humbling us as a team,” Game Director Nathan Phail-Liff said in an acceptance message. “And continuing that was, frankly, a nerve wracking endeavor.”
We thought Lone Echo 2 was a good follow-up to the original that featured the same stunning levels of immersion thanks to the incredible zero gravity locomotion and high-end visuals. Ultimately, though, we argued that it moved at too slow a pace for its own good and could have streamlined some of its lengthy narrative-driven segments, though it was definitely still worth playing for anyone with a PC good enough to actually run it.
Lone Echo 2 was, however, the last full Oculus Rift exclusive we’re likely to ever see, so it’s nice to see the headset at least go out on a high note with awards such as these. We’re eagerly waiting to see what the now Meta-owned Ready at Dawn does next.
Lone Echo 2 is a suitably lavish swansong for the Oculus Rift, but it’s a familiar and glacially-paced adventure. Read on for our Lone Echo 2 review.
Get a good look at Lone Echo 2 while you can. Drink in the sweeping vistas, finely-detailed space junk and frankly unmatched character animations because, let’s face it, VR probably isn’t going to look this good again for some time. Ready At Dawn’s long-delayed sequel has the unenviable task of being Facebook’s last Oculus Rift exclusive; one final high-budget, ludicrously-produced bash to make even the newest of GPUs groan. The game itself is unconcerned with that burden, instead stubbornly fixated on its slow-going roots in a deeply respectable but glacially-paced follow-up.
We’re back with Jack and Liv, the android and human odd-couple that, at the end of the first game, found themselves at the other end of time after a supernatural event catapulted a disease-ridden ship into their own era. The pair must find a way home whilst also combating the infestation, known as the Biomass.
Fans of the first Lone Echo will remember it for its deep focus on narrative and character connection, and that’s still very much the case here. I’d argue that, to this day, we haven’t seen a more convincing VR companion than Liv, a sullen-but-fair Captain that’s immaculately realized both through believably empathetic dialogue perfectly delivered by Alice Coulthard and RAD’s own penchant for impeccable facial animations and performance capture. Her relationship with robotic protagonist, Jack (who, oddly, is voiced by Troy Baker literally doing the robot), is a rare thing. It’s built on a deep admiration and fondness for each other but leaving the player to ponder the iffy ethics of human/android relations themselves.
Lone Echo 2 Review – The Facts
What is it?: A sequel to 2017’s sci-fi VR blockbuster in which you throw yourself through zero-gravity environments in a narrative-driven campaign.. Platforms: Oculus Rift Release Date: Out now Price: $39.99
It’s this relationship — and others that will brew throughout — that ends up carrying the sequel’s plot. The quest for a potential cure for the Biomass is certainly filled with twists and turns, including moments of nail-biting tension, but it’s also one of hefty, hefty conversation. There is a lot of waiting around and listening to other characters talk in Lone Echo 2, even more so than the first game given that this is a longer sequel stretching out to a 7+ hour adventure. The small dialogue choices return and there are sometimes microinteractions to keep you busy but, even though the game remains powerfully immersive throughout, your own patience might not last the trip.
That’s not to say the story itself is boring, it’s just extrapolated to an unnecessary degree. Characters sluggishly reach conclusions that you’ve come to minutes before they’ve finished a monologue, or deliver objectives to pull switches or scan items long after you’ve already completed them. In one late-game sequence, an AI extensively explains how to use a hand-mounted gun while you’re chained to a wall and you’re not let free until you’ve completed a lot of target practice. Anyone that’s played a VR game before will likely have learned how to use it in mere seconds. Every tiny action or minor development comes with a similarly lengthy explanation. The game essentially refuses to move at your pace and, whenever you’re accompanied by another companion, you know you’ll be moving at half the rate you would otherwise.
It’s not until you’re finally given some alone time — a good few hours into the game — that Lone Echo 2 finally starts to return to some of the interesting puzzle-platforming it explored in the first game. The zero-gravity movement is still wonderfully fluid, allowing you to hurl yourself from one end of the room to another with lucid-like simplicity. Challenges pick up where the first game left off; the bulbous Biomass presents a lot of navigational trials but the game quickly sets about establishing a few new threats. Ticks, for example, are a mobile form of the infection that you’ll first need to distract with another power source — say moveable cranes or door locks — before passing by, and one section with net-like Webs requires you to target specific mounds of Biomass to unblock passages.
Smaller side missions are also back though there are precious few of them, and many of the tasks at hand resemble the busy work and fetch quests you’ll have gotten used to in the first game. In other words, gameplay in Lone Echo 2 is very much in service to the story at all times, and there are only a handful of moments in which it really feels like a game more than it does a kind of interactive movie.
Appreciated as these new challenges are, there’s little to Lone Echo 2’s gameplay that’s drastically different from the first. New powers like telekinesis and, eventually a wrist-mounted firearm (borrowed from the excellent Echo Combat expansion to the multiplayer Echo VR) are similarly welcome but really don’t evolve too far beyond what’s come before. Both thematically and in execution this is a little bit too much of the same, and the sequel doesn’t benefit from the same sense of revelatory exploration that made the first such a landmark achievement. When I finished the first game in 2017 I said I felt like I was witnessing the end of the first act rather than a full game and both Lone Echo 2’s story and gameplay features definitely feel like expansions to the original more than the next big step.
If there’s one element of that game that does push the boundaries, however, it’s the sheer graphical ambition. Lone Echo 2 is, without a doubt, the best-looking VR game you’ll play this year. Not only are the character models some of the most strikingly authentic you can find in gaming but areas of the game are huge in scope with stunning complexity to them. The Biomass itself is a thing to behold, flooding through corridors and floors. But it’s not until later in the game that you realize each and every bulb in the sprawling sea of infection is its own unique property, and not just an asset mesh. That counts right down to the tiniest of spheres on a control panel; it’s ridiculously impressive to take in.
Lone Echo 2 Review – Comfort
Lone Echo 2 is pretty unique in the comfort zone given that its movement is different to most VR games. Throwing yourself through environments feels natural and, as such, you’ll hopefully find it to be a very comfortable experience even if it’s technically smooth locomotion. You could always try the free Echo VR multiplayer to see if you can stomach the experience, plus there are incremental artificial turn options too.
Amongst this eye-opening display of technical proficiency hides a rawer beauty. When you die in the game, you reboot at a Fabricator machine and the husk of your old shell is still visible. In one scene I respawned just in time to see my old self float past in a fetal position before being lost to the vastness of space. It was a stunning moment of quiet awe that I won’t soon forget, and you’ll more than likely discover many of these moments for yourself.
But you will, of course, need a very decent rig to make it run and there are some technical hiccups. My RTX 3060 could just about handle the game on high graphics settings but even then, running the game off of an SSD with 32GB RAM, there was some pretty aggressive pop-in in some of the game’s larger areas and even some of the smaller sections had blurred textures. Combined with the cut to loads between areas, the overall package doesn’t feel quite as polished as you might expect in certain segments. It’s also worth nothing that, if you’re playing with an Oculus Quest via Link or AirLink, the camera placement on that device can cause some hiccups in tracking when facing away from your hands.
Lone Echo 2 Review – Final Impressions
Lone Echo 2’s incredible production values and first-rate immersion make for an enjoyable swansong that’s let down by its plodding pace and familiarity. Despite arriving four years after the groundbreaking original, there’s very little that will surprise you here and, although well written, the drawn-out character dialogue quickly wears thin. It’s still held up by a fantastic locomotion system with first-rate immersion alongside a solid story with believable performances, but the startling spark of blockbuster innovation that fuelled the first game has long-since died out. Jack and Liv’s mission to get back to the past makes for a fun ride, but parts of Lone Echo 2 were stuck there to begin with.
For more on how we arrived at this rating, read our review guidelines. What did you make of our Lone Echo 2 review? Let us know in the comments below!
Lone Echo II has been in the works for quite some time now, and will release as the last Oculus Rift exclusive game. Facebook recently stopped selling the Rift PC VR headset and has since doubled down on its commitment to its standalone Oculus Quest platform. The Quest platform has increasingly become Facebook’s platform for exclusives, such as Jurassic World Aftermath and The Climb 2. Even big titles that originally launched as PC VR exclusives, such as Medal of Honor: Above and Beyond, are now also making their way over to Quest 2.
It’s been more than four years since the release of the lauded Lone Echo, but its sequel is finally just around the corner. Ahead of Lone Echo II’s release date on October 12th, Facebook’s VR studio Ready at Dawn has revealed a launch trailer teasing some of the action players can expect from the game.
Lone Echo II is set to pick up essentially right where the original game left off, with the player (the android ‘Jack’) and compatriot Liv still unraveling exactly where they’ve ended up and what to do next.
In the trailer we see the familiar zero-G locomotion that was so core to the first game, as well as the return of the ‘biomass’ which posed an environmental threat. Not too much else about what’s happening is spoiled (thank you), but there’s also the more advanced and seemingly sentient form of biomass which we saw in our preview of Lone Echo II way back in 2019.
Since our preview, however, Lone Echo II has been delayed multiple times, from an initial release date expected in 2019 all the way to October 2021, with its developer having also been acquired by Facebook in 2020. It remains to be seen how much, or how little, the game has changed due to the delays and restructuring of its developer; after all this time we sure hope it’s worth the wait.
Lone Echo II is set for a release date on October 12th on Oculus PC, priced at $40. The original Lone Echo remains discounted to $10 on the lead up to the sequel’s launch.
Lone Echo II releases on Oculus Rift on October 12. Facebook and Ready At Dawn say that’s final this time.
The release date has been a long time coming. The sequel to the original Lone Echo was first announced in 2018 and, though we saw the game in 2019, Ready at Dawn fell silent for much of 2020. An August 2021 release date was then confirmed earlier this year but the game was delayed once again right at the last minute. A blog update today confirms the sequel launches next month. Check out the trailer for the game below.
Lone Echo II Gets A Final Release Date
All the same, we’re looking forward to getting back to the narrative-driven adventure, which follows an android named Jack and Captain Olivia Rhodes who find themselves at the other end of time and space after the first game’s events. Gameplay sees players throwing themselves through zero-gravity environments, avoiding hazards and solving puzzles. We thought the first game set the bar for Rift exclusives.
Lone Echo II also looks to be the last Oculus Rift exclusive game, as Facebook has stopped selling the PC VR headset to double down on Quest. The game also isn’t coming to SteamVR despite the fact that the last Rift exclusive before it, Medal of Honor, launched there too.
This will be the first of two Facebook-funded titles releasing in October. Yesterday the company also confirmed that Quest 2 exclusive, Resident Evil 4 VR, launches on October 21. Are you going to be picking either game up? Let us know in the comments below.
Lone Echo II, Ready at Dawn’s long-awaited sequel to the sci-fi adventure Oculus PC exclusive, was supposed to make its grand entrance back in August, but was delayed at the last minute to “later this year.” Now the studio says it’s officially set for launch on October 12th.
Update (September 28th, 2021): Ready at Dawn today announced in a blog post that Lone Echo II is set to launch on Oculus PC on October 12th. This includes Oculus Rift and Quest via Link or Air Link.
The original article announcing the game’s last delay follows below.
Original Article (August 13th, 2021): The studio released a message on Thursday stating that Lone Echo II is being delayed from its August 24th launch date to “later this year.” Here’s the full message from Ready at Dawn below:
To Our Lone Echo Community,
It was heartwarming to see the outpouring of love and excitement last month when we announced the Lone Echo II launch date. Like many game studios over the past couple of years, our team has tackled new obstacles in development, and has needed to be inventive and resourceful to reach this point. We have been working hard to deliver the very best experience possible and we are eager to have you join Liv and Jack in their adventures once again. However, as we get closer to launch day, it has become clear that we needed a bit more time to polish and reach our desired quality level. As such, Lone Echo II’s launch date will be moved to later this year.
The decision to delay a game is always a tough one, but we believe you all deserve to experience the very best we can deliver.
We thank you for your patience and understanding.
Be safe, and see you around the rings of Saturn…
-The Ready At Dawn Team
Lone Echo II has been delayed now a number of times since it was originally announced to arrive in 2019. Like the first in the series, the space-faring adventure is set to be a graphically intense game targeting Oculus PC headsets (Oculus Rift and Quest via Link or Air Link). It’s also set to be the last PC-only title funded by Facebook, both through direct funding and by now actually owning the studio that produces it.
Since we’ll be waiting until another release date materializes, the original Lone Echo (2017) is currently on sale for $10. It was Road to VR’s 2017 Rift Game of the Year, and still holds up as a class-leading PC VR game in terms of polish and immersion
Now two years old, Ready at Dawn’s 15-minute gameplay video still gives us the best look of a new mystery and a few puzzling challenges you’ll face in your story-based jaunt through space as Jack, android companion to the human Captain Liv.
The last announced Oculus Rift exclusive title, Lone Echo II, will launch on August 24 for $39.99 and it will be playable on Quest from a VR-ready PC via Oculus Link or Air Link.
Lone Echo’s impressive single-player campaign in 2017 was one of consumer VR’s early standouts for hand-controlled interaction and the original game will be priced $9.99 until the release of Lone Echo II. So if you haven’t already experienced the compelling story of Liv and her artificially intelligent companion Jack, now is a great time to get caught up on the mechanics of zero-g gameplay before the launch of the sequel. We’ll have to test it when Lone Echo II launches, but many Rift platform games are playable on other PC VR headsets via hacks like Revive.
Lone Echo likely represents a swan song for Facebook’s Rift platform and effectively marks a finale to one of its first efforts in consumer VR. Facebook acquired Oculus in 2014 and funded a series of PC VR games as it learned through trial and error that players enjoyed VR games with tracked hand controls over those played with traditional gamepad. Facebook’s efforts in PC VR ran parallel to those in mobile VR, which won favor with consumers as Facebook progressed from Samsung’s Gear VR phone-powered headset to the underpowered Oculus Go and finally to Oculus Quest, which combined the room-scale and tracked hand controls that made Rift compelling with a standalone wireless form factor.
People who buy Lone Echo II will get a new Jack-themed chassis for their avatars in Echo VR. Last year Facebook acquired Ready At Dawn, the developer of all the Echo games, after the studio adapted the zero-g mechanics it pioneered in Lone Echo into a competitive sport that also ran on Oculus Quest. The free-to-play game is one of VR’s best competitive sports titles. Facebook provided the render below showing the VEGA X-3 chassis players will get for purchasing the game.
Facebook teases that players will get “a new assortment of tools to overcome complex challenges and startling discoveries of deep space in the far future” in Lone Echo II.
Will you be playing Lone Echo II when it launches in August? Let us know in the comments below.
The long-awaited sequel to Ready At Dawn’s space adventure Lone Echo (2017) is nearly here. Lone Echo II is now set to arrive on August 24th, likely making it one of the last PC-only games funded by Facebook to arrive on the Oculus Store.
Lone Echo II has been delayed multiple times since it was originally slated to arrive in 2019, but the wait is almost over. The game, which launches on the Oculus Store for Rift and Quest via either Link or Air Link next month, will be priced at $40.
In a bid to get more people interested in the now four year-old game, the original Lone Echois getting a steep cut from its regular price of $40, bringing the game to just $10 for a limited time.
Lone Echo follows the exploits of Captain Olivia Rhodes and an artificial intelligence named Jack (that’s you) who look after an advanced mining facility around the rings of Saturn. As Jack, you use futuristic tools, solve puzzles, and fly around still one of the most detailed and immersive VR games to hit the Oculus platform.
Image courtesy Ready at Dawn, Facebook
Since you’re a consciousness backed up on local servers, getting killed isn’t nearly the same corporeal drama as it might be for your companion Captain Rhodes. You simply wake back up in a new artificial body and continue with the narrative adventure.
No spoilers here, but in Lone Echo II you reprise the role of Jack as you embark on new adventures with Captain Rhodes. Although it’s possible things have changed over the past two years, a 15-minute gameplay video gives us the best look of a new mystery and a few puzzling challenges Jack must overcome.
Ready at Dawn, which has since been acquired by Facebook, says that anyone who purchases Lone Echo II will also receive a free chassis for their Echo VR avatar, which matches Jack’s new chassis (seen above). Echo VR is the studio’s sportier cross-platform little brother, which is kind of like a zero-gravity version of ultimate frisbee.
Community Download is a weekly discussion-focused articles series published (usually) every Monday in which we pose a single, core question to you all, our readers, in the spirit of fostering discussion and debate. For today’s Community Download, we want to know what you think are the biggest stories in VR this year?
Finally, 2020 is almost over. In what will go down in history as one of the most tumultuous ever experienced, a lot has happened. Amidst everything else, we’ve obviously had a burgeoning VR industry continue to grow spurred on by new hardware, groundbreaking software, and a nurturing base of followers and fans.
One of the biggest headlines this year is of course the various ways the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic has impacted the market. From shuttering location-based VR arcades to leading towards wider adoption overall for in-home VR, it’s had a dramatic impact.
We’ve continued to push forward with our own remote solution — The VR Download — which you can see a snippet of above. It’s a virtual studio in which we stream live podcasts from, while interacting with chat, using our VR avatars in a custom-built studio. It continues to get better and better as well!
Then we’ve of course had amazing VR titles like Half-Life: Alyx and The Walking Dead: Saints & Sinners setting new bars of quality for the entire industry to aspire to going forward. There are tons of great VR games on the horizon too, such as Lone Echo 2, Hitman 3, and Maskmaker to look forward to next.
Let us know what you think was the biggest or perhaps most surprising headline for 2020 down in the comments below!
