At E3 2017, Lone Echo snagged the Game Critics Award for Best VR Game and received countless nominations in the same vein from other award shows, including The Game Awards and DICE Awards. The game represents the first foray into virtual reality by Ready At Dawn, which was acquired in July 2020 by Oculus, which expressed a desire to support the developer’s future work in VR.
A tense sci-fi narrative adventure game, Lone Echo recounted the story of Captain Olivia Rhodes and a player-controlled android named Jack, alone on a space station orbiting Saturn when its systems are knocked offline by a mysterious phenomenon. The pair must repair their flagging vessel and uncover the cause of the phenomenon that is becoming increasingly threatening.
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Now four years later, Jack and Liv return in Lone Echo 2 on a journey that takes them even deeper into space. First announced in 2018, the game experienced delays due to the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, and updates about the sequel were almost nonexistent. However, at the first-ever Oculus Gaming Showcase on April 21, 2021, it was revealed that Lone Echo 2 now has a summer launch window.
Not much else is known about the game, other than a tidbit from the marketing blurb on the game’s official website, which teases that Liv and Jack will venture “past the very boundaries of time itself.” The duo find themselves by the rings of Saturn, stranded 400 years in the future, and an abandoned space station is their only way home.
If Lone Echo 2 plays anything like its predecessor, the game will feature a movement system developed by Ready At Dawn specifically for VR that was praised for its innovation. The game took place entirely in zero gravity and, using the Oculus Touch controllers, players could navigate through the space station by hand, pulling themselves along using rails or pushing off from bulkheads and other objects.
Puzzles, problem solving, and interactive dialog formed the core of Lone Echo’s gameplay, and the game featured an incredibly detailed space station, immense outer-space environment, and interactive space equipment, all of which added to the feeling of immersion into the atmosphere of isolation and tension.
While developing Lone Echo, Ready At Dawn was also working on Echo Arena, a multiplayer component that was released with the game or purchased as a standalone. Other than the zero-gravity movement system, the feeling of Echo Arena differs greatly from the moody ambience of Lone Echo. Calling to mind the Battle Room from Ender’s Game, Echo Arena is a sports game in which two five-player teams compete to launch a flying disc into their opponents’ goal.
Lone Echo 2 will release for the Rift and Quest platforms on PC.