About Color Echo
Color Echo is a sequence-memory game played on four coloured pads. The game lights up a pattern, you play it back, and every time you get it right the same pattern returns with one extra step on the end. One wrong pad and the run is over.
How to play
- Press Start and the game plays a sequence of one pad. Each pad has its own tone as well as its own colour.
- When the hint above the board changes from "Watch..." to "Your turn!", repeat the sequence from the first step to the last.
- If you repeat the whole sequence correctly, the game replays it with one new random pad added at the end. Earlier steps never change.
- Pressing a wrong pad at any point ends the game immediately. There is no time limit while you are entering your answer.
- Your score is the number of steps you successfully repeated, which is the current round number minus one.
- Playback speeds up as the sequence grows: each step starts at about 0.63 seconds and gets 20 ms faster per round, bottoming out at 0.3 seconds per step from round 18 onward.
Controls
- Mouse: click a pad to press it. The pad registers the moment the button goes down, not on release.
- Touch: tap a pad. Taps made while the sequence is still playing are ignored.
- There are no keyboard controls for the pads.
Tips and strategy
- Use the sound. The pads play four different notes, from high on green to low on blue, so you can memorise a tune as well as a colour pattern.
- Name the colours under your breath as they play ("green, red, red, blue"). Saying the sequence uses a different memory channel from just watching it.
- Group long sequences into chunks of three or four, the same way people remember phone numbers.
- You only need to learn one new step each round. Focus your attention on the end of the playback, since everything before it is already known.
- Take your time when it is your turn. Only a wrong pad ends the game, so a short pause to recall the next step costs nothing.
Background
Color Echo follows the format of Simon, the electronic memory game invented by Ralph Baer and Howard J. Morrison and released by Milton Bradley in 1978, which also used four coloured, tone-linked buttons and a sequence that grows by one each round. Games like this exercise short-term and working memory: you have to hold an ordered list in mind and reproduce it exactly. Because the sequence keeps growing instead of being replaced, it also rewards rehearsal, as you can practise the known part of the pattern while waiting for the new step.
Questions
- Does the sequence change between rounds?
- No. Each round keeps every earlier step in the same order and adds one random pad to the end, so you only ever have one new step to learn.
- Is there a time limit when I am repeating the pattern?
- No. The game waits for your input as long as you need. The only way to lose is to press the wrong pad.
- How is my score counted?
- Your score is the number of steps in the last sequence you repeated correctly. If you fail on round 9, for example, your score is 8.