LogFAQs > #976527950

Currently Playing: Echoic Memory

What Is It? A song matching game to help a faceless company build a slightly more intrusive version of Alexa. I'm sure nothing will go wrong.

Thoughts:
-Up next is Echoic Memory. I remember when I downloaded this game I somehow thought it was called Ectopic Memory and thought that might be the weirdest name for a game ever. Turns out I just cant read.
-This is the final week 4 game of season 1, so I'll be 1/3 of the way through the season once I finish this. My pace is a bit slower than I was hoping for, but I'm doing other things so I'm not 100% Playdate focused. Shocking, I know.
-Story mode just jumps right into things.
-You: I had the most amazing dream last night. I was in a secret club, filled with all these people. Alright game you clearly do not know me because that is a sentence I would never say, ever. That sounds like a nightmare.
-You: The one weird thing was the DJ kept looping the same song over and over for the entire night. OH NO IT IS A NIGHTMARE HES DESCRIBING BOOGIE LOOPS.
-You: Everybody loved that song. They didnt want to dance to anything else. Actually you might be describing the plot of Hocus Pocus.
-You: We were dancing to that song for what felt like days. The suddenly the musicstopped. The speakers went silent. It was horrible! Everyone got so mad. Hey yes it is 4 AM and our DJ only has one song they can play. We were hoping you guys would take a hint and get the hell out of here hours ago. Please leave. We have families we need to get home to.
-In a shocking TWIST our narrator selves find out that we were the DJ all along. This is just like The Sixth Sense but with more techno music and axe body spray.
-Ok so now I get to pick between two songs to get the party going again. No clue if my choice makes any difference at all.
-Oh and apparently Im describing my dream to a robot. Cant even get a human to listen to my boring ass dream where I am a club DJ playing one song over and over, huh?
-So robot I had this dream and I was playing the same song over and over and the song kept going and then robot guess what guess what robot I was the DJ and then the music stopped and then I played it again and everyone clapped isnt that cool robot huh robot? BEGINNING SELF DESTRUCT SEQUENCE
-Also I dont want to belabor this point but if I was at a club and a DJ kept playing the same song over and over I would do everything I could to organize a mob and usurp the DJ. Im a bit worried the protagonist here doesnt know how DJs work.
-Robot: But I dont ont nt understand 32what iwh104@t is at is a is a isis11532a (lambda symbol)R10197109?? Aw fuck we broke the robot with our boring story.
-Also what is a isis?!? Someone needs to stop this robot before he joins a terrorist sect.
-A voice on the loudspeaker tells me that new hires shouldnt make conversation with robots which is a good rule of thumb in general.
-Also the talking sound in this game sounds like bad audio feedback which is like the most annoying choice from a design perspective.
-Also Im a menial worker at some sort of manufacturing plant in this game? What is with the Playdate and throwing me into the most depressing, boring jobs imaginable?
-Their flagship product is an AI powered, robot smart speaker. What makes a speaker smart? Well, typically knowledge about the subject matter and a willingness to engage their audience. But that doesnt matter now.
-It is a voice commanded speaker that is ALWAYS LISTENING and oh hey an Alexa parallel. Playdate hates Jeff Bezos, is the impression Im getting so far. Which, I mean, fair.
-Loudspeaker: All the 1010s in the wild collect plenty of data for us. People are low key OBSESSED with our tech! Unfortunately, most of that data is people asking their not-Alexa if they should be concerned about this weird raised mole they just found.
-Loudspeaker: Your job is to make sure every unit passes Quality Control Validation. Yeah, cant wait to see how the game makes THAT fun.
-The robots head opens up and the loudspeaker tells me I need to validate the audio memory. Uh, do I get training on this first or what?
-Er. Ok. So the jist of it is the robot will play a short audio loop and I need to poke around to find the same audio loop. Easy enough, I guess.
-Yeah. So the game plays a little song loop and then I listen to four different options and pick the one that matches. I need to do that three times and then I move on. The sound clips dont sound all that similar so Im guessing this gets harder the more I play.
-The robot is still speaking in gibberish nonsense but uh I guess job well done?
-Loudspeaker mentions something about this next unit having a new algorithm. You: Wait, did you say new Al Gore-ism? HAHAHAHA. Hilarious. And timely, might I add.
-The new twist is that now I need to tune the song first. I wonder what part of the Playdate theyre going to have me use to tune something.
-Hm. So immediately I notice this tuning thing doesnt really have any sort of finesse to it. You start listening to the tracks now and you cant hear anything. Then you move the crank for a while and you hear something. And then you keep moving the crank for as long as you want and nothing changes. You arent really tuning you can just crank like crazy and thats enough.
-This data harvesters er I mean smart speakers cant be doing a very good job because even the ready one just kind of say random works. Hey Alexa wheres a good pizza place. Im gonna gomma gungungungunna Hi! There here ER. Ok cool thanks Alexa, that helped a lot.
-Im warned that if I validate the wrong bit (so match the wrong song), the robot blows a fuse and too many and they scrap the whole unit. And dock my paycheck. I have no idea if that means anything in terms of things that actually matter in the game, but Ill be careful regardless.
-So Im like five in now and things are going pretty smooth. Im doing such a good job that Loudspeaker voice goes on break. Bye loudspeaker voice! Ill miss you.
-Ok. You do like ten of these in a row and eventually the four options give way to eight to make things a bit more complicated.
-Bad news is I'm getting bored already. "Match this sound with this other sound" isn't a bad idea per se, but it isn't working for me.
-The "story" here also isn't helping. A robot comes, says gibberish, you do the sound matching game, then it says more gibberish and leaves. It isn't interesting at all and I'm not sure if this is going anywhere or not.
-I do feel like there is a fundamental flaw in the design here. Each robot is timed (a battery icon slowly drains as you do things). I have absolutely no clue if it means anything at all and what the punishment is, but the effect here is I'm rushing to match songs. So if you like the music, you can't really enjoy it because you're rushing to match songs. And if you don't like the music, well then what the hell is the point of any of this?

Time Played: Probably just over an hour.
High Score: No high score here, but I'm perfect at the "listening to music and matching it to the same music track" part.
Beaten? Not yet.
Grade: Early ballots aren't looking good. Gameplay is vibing with me. So like a four/five for now but that could fluctuate some still.
Favorite Part So Far: Um. Some of the songs are pretty catchy, I suppose.