Ravensburger Echoes: The Microchip – A Thrilling and Immersive Audio Mystery Game for Ages 14 and up, Multicolor, Small

I bought this game original after attending a murder-mystery-dinner with my wife, and thought this game is like that. However, Echoes is best described as an audiobook that comes in pieces. Task of the players is to bring the pieces into order, so to get to the entire audiobook. The game features six chapter cards, and 18 cards, out of which three each have to be linked to the correct chapter, and then the chapters put in order. Each card, and also each chapter contains an image, and plays a sound when holding a smart device (phone or tablet) over the card with the free Echoes app. (The Echoes app is also used to solve the puzzle, checking for correct order, and playing entire chapters, to the entire book, plus pro- and epilogue.) The sound can be a conversation, a noise, background noises, or large arrangement, where the player is a passive listener to lots of things happening in the background. The sound bites are unlike many narrated American audiobooks which are just narration of the actual book, but more like entire plays, more alike to a radio play, similar to what you can liste to on weekends on NPR and other stations. The production quality is very high. The game can be played alone or with as many players as you like. There is no competition - everyone cooperates. There is an easy mode, where you can divide the cards into to stacks of nine each, which we did not find necessary. We did the Microchip, which is a science fiction story, quite deep and dark, which a dilemma not unlike the famous The Physicists from Friedrich Duerrenmatt. To mention, is that I tried myself to solve it alone and spent several hours (when tired before bedtime), whereas my 14 year old solved it within an hour swiftly. The nice touch is that you can switch between languages, currently only English, French, German, and Chech, however, we had fun switching between the languages that we know (somewhat), which made it more of an exciting experience. It is quiet enjoyable, to do with kids, perhaps date night, or just alone before bed, to relax. It is needless to say, that each player can only play it once, since you would remember the order of the cards. However, the Echoes game got multiple applications among the kids and us as parents, and it is fairly inexpensive to be even played just once.

The point is to put the cards with the audio snipits in order. I’m not familiar with this type of product but putting the storyline in order is not my idea of solving a mystery. Maybe would have been more enjoyable by myself. In a group it was terribly disappointing.

These are great games for 4-6 players, give your brain a bit of exercise but not over taxing, the app is quite easy to use.