Ekko: Occlude the Void
Game Designer - Level Designer - UI/UX
Ekko is a premium casual puzzle mobile game where the player has to go through musical territories and recover their magic. The goal is to capture the Void, an evil creature that stole the sound and music of the world by solving challenging puzzles.
Ekko was featured as Game of the Day in the App Store and was a finalist in the Google Play LATAM indie game festival 2018.
Responsibilities:
Co-designed puzzles.
Co-designed Totems and Void mechanics.
Co-designed progression system.
Co-designed tutorial and first-time user experience.
Ran usability and playthrough tests to measure ease of use and engagement.
Designed and implemented UI elements.
Ekko was born from a simple mechanic, helping the “Totems”, reach their specific goals. The idea was to drag the totems through a gird to reach its starting point, building up a specific song related to one of the musical territories, and after activating the musical lever, the totems start an automatic movement at the compass of the song until they reach their goal.
Once the core mechanic was established, the design team started designing totems that could have different movements depending on their shape and color to add a layer of complexity to the game. Some of the totems move straight while others change direction once they collide with a wall. Now, the player had to think more thoroughly about where to place the totems on the board, as they all had different behaviors.
Apart from the main totems, we designed the Void, an evil totem that stole the sound and music of the world. In the final level of each musical territory, the player has to incarcerate the Void in order to regain the sound and color of the territory. The behavior of the Void is simple, for every movement of a totem, the Void will move to the opposite side
Finally, After 6 months of development, we launched our game in the App Store. Ekko was well received by the audience and we were featured as Game of the Day in the App Store and was a finalist in the Google Play LATAM indie game festival 2018.