ECHO (SNES)

ECHO is a homebrew game for the Super Nintendo. You are a small bat lost in a pitch-black cave, and your only way to see is to send out an echo. Find the green portal in each of the 50 caves and make your way back to the light.

Every echo lights up the walls around you. Every echo is also heard. Shadows hunt the place you called from, crawlers patrol the corridors and eyes in the walls shoot balls of light. You only get a few echoes per cave. See the way out, or stay quiet.

🧩 How to Play

• Find the green portal to escape each cave.
• The cave is dark. The walls right next to you always glow faintly, and you get a free echo at the start of every cave.
• Press A or B to send an echo. A wave of sound lights up the walls, then they slowly fade back into the dark.
• Echoes are limited: 6 per cave at first, down to 2 in the deepest caves. The top of the screen shows how many you have used.
• Shadows hear your echoes and rush to where you sent them. Keep moving after you call.
• Crawlers walk back and forth along one corridor. Wall eyes glow, then shoot a ball of light down their corridor.
• Listen: creatures click as they move. Louder means closer, and the sound comes from their side.
• Touch a creature and you lose a life and restart the cave. Lose every life and it is game over.

🕹️ Controls

Button	Action
D-Pad	Move
A / B	Send an echo
Start	Pause / Resume
Select (while paused)	Quit to menu

✨ Features

• 50 caves in five blocks that grow up to 31 × 15 squares, with a scrolling camera and a new wall color every ten levels.
• Three kinds of creatures: shadows that hunt your echoes, crawlers that patrol and wall eyes that shoot.
• Sound you play by ear: stereo clicks tell you where the creatures are, with a cave reverb from the SNES echo hardware.
• Level Select with battery save: every cave you reach stays unlocked.
• Options for 3 to 7 lives and music on or off, plus an original ambient soundtrack that changes with each block.
• Hidden secrets to discover.

💾 How to Run

ECHO is a real SNES ROM (.smc, LoROM, NTSC, with battery save). It was tested on Snes9x and bsnes, including their RetroArch cores. Download the file and open it in your emulator of choice.

🏆 Achievements Suggestions

This is the suggested set. All of them can be earned in a single run.

• First Flight — Escape level 1.
• Something in the Dark — Escape level 3, the first cave with a shadow.
• Ten Caves Deep — Escape level 10.
• Twenty Below — Escape level 20.
• Thirty Fathoms — Escape level 30.
• Into the Abyss — Escape level 40, the last cave before the shadows come in fours.
• Out of the Cave — Escape level 50 and see the light again.
• Bestiary — Escape a cave where shadows, crawlers and wall eyes all live together.
• Eye Contact — Escape a cave with two wall eyes without sending a single echo.
• Echolocation — Escape a cave with four shadows using exactly one echo.
• Silent Steps — Escape a cave that has shadows without sending a single echo.
• Listen Closely — Escape a cave with four shadows without sending a single echo.
• Echo Storm — Use every echo you have in a cave with shadows and still escape it.
• Hunted — Escape a cave while at least two shadows are hunting you.
• By a Thread — Escape a cave with four shadows while on your last life.
• Deep Silence — Starting from level 1, escape levels 1 to 10 in one run without sending any echo.
• Untouchable — Starting from level 1, escape levels 1 to 10 in one run without losing a life.
• Steady Wings — Starting from level 1, escape levels 1 to 30 in one run without losing a life.
• Quick Wings — Starting from level 1, escape levels 1 to 10 in under 90 seconds of play.
• Whisper — Beat the game from level 1 sending 25 echoes or fewer.
• True Bat — Beat the game from level 1 with the starting lives option set to 3.
• Golden Bat (Easter Egg) — Some bats are worth their weight in gold. The title screen knows how.
• Sleepy Bat (Easter Egg) — Even a bat on the run needs a nap sometimes.

📝 Version

v1 — October 2026. Initial release.