Echo the Mouse is a gentle reminder of the days of gaming when there was a time limit. Back then, the whole point is to make your gaming experience was to make it a brief distraction, not like the games of today where it will totally suck you in until you can’t do anything but to defeat “just one more level”. 

The point of Echo the Mouse is very simple, to get the cheese. To do that, you have to run through various Donkey Kong-like constructions, and leap over obstacles to get as much cheese as possible. There is a stopwatch that times you as you play. If you run out of time, you die. If you step on a sharp obstacle, you die. Fortunately, you have the traditional three lives. 

However, even if you had a hundred lives, it wouldn’t make much difference. This game is all about finding the quickest way to get the cheese with the time that you are allotted. To be honest, I couldn’t make it past level 4. I suppose that I could have worked at it, and developed a foolproof strategy so I could get the cheese, and then I would have triumphed over my frustration, and feel really good. Then I would have to go on to a different level. 

Gameplay is pretty simple on Echo. Arrow keys with Shift for jump. What is with these freeware games using Shift as an action key? I really think that the Space Bar would be better. Oh well. Quitting from Echo was tough to. I had to use Ctrl-Alt-Del, but I later found out that either Q or Esc would do it. 

Final word on Echo The Mouse: If you like this type of game, try it out here. 

This entry was posted on Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 at 8:21 am and is filed under Main. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.