OVERVIEW
Echo is an augmented reality game where players must explore different
local landmarks to uncover clues about an apocalyptic time-space
phenomenon known as The Wave. Aimed at college-aged males and females
(18-24), Echo promises an engrossing citywide scavenger hunt experience that
plays off of popular time travel themes found in shows such as Doctor Who and
Flashforward.
Upon downloading the Echo app, players receive a message stating that
The Wave, a massive time-space distortion, has already destroyed several
parallel universe Earths. The growing Wave now threatens to ripple through the
player’s world. The Wave first manifests as Echoes, small portals between the
player’s world and Earths already claimed by The Wave. By investigating and
sealing these rifts, players gain clues about what caused the rifts and can
prevent The Wave from claiming their world.
While Echo can be modified for different cities, this design document will
refer to an experience tailored for Los Angeles.
TECHNOLOGY
Players engage in the Echo experience through a smartphone application of
the same name. While not required, Echo also incorporates smartwatch
technology. The Silencer employs the following technologies:
Smart Phone

Advance photo recognition, akin to Layar

Advance image overlay system, akin to Layar

Holophonic Sound

Video Recording and Playback

GPS
Smartwatch

Compass

Accelerometer
USER INTERFACE
The Echo Application allows players to engage in two different modes. In
Research Mode, the player can look through all their archived data, and assists
in the location of incoming Echoes. Once a player approaches an echo, the
Silencer enters Silencer Mode.
Research Mode
In Research Mode, players can access the Echo Location function to find map
coordinates of the next level. Under Data Archives, they can replay the
transmissions they’ve received, as well look up information on the other
participants from parallel universes. Digging into the archives, players will soon
realizes that among the deceased parallel universe participants are their own
parallel universe selves.
Silencer Mode
In Silencer Mode, players no longer have control over the application.
Instead, the application will present them with information at will, much like a
game. Silencer Mode when a player approaches an Echo, and announces the
start of the episode by playing a first-person POV recording of another player’s
run-through.
Then, the application begins to record in real time. Players’ screens will
show what the application is recording. It will also juxtapose an outline of the
Echo’s location; players must line up the silhouette with the actual physical
location in order to view the Echo. Essentially, the application treats terrain and
landmarks as QR codes.
Once the Echo begins, players may silence the echo at any moment
simply by tapping on the screen. The player may then move onto the next Echo.
If players fail to close all Echoes within the time limit, the application will
ask that they transmit their data to the next timeline.
Silencer Mode
In Silencer mode, players must juxtapose the image in the center of the
screen with the actual physical object. Doing so will trigger an Echo. In the
example above, players will need to locate Grauman’s Chinese theater, and
successfully juxtapose the image on top of it.
Once an Echo begins, players will witness afterimages from worlds
destroyed by the Wave. Note that in this example, the ghostly image of Sarah
has entered the scene.
SUMMARY
Genre
Echo is an augmented reality game that contains elements of alternative reality
games, and may strike participants as reminiscent of geo-caching and GPS
scavenger games.
In terms of narrative content, Echo is a modern day sci-fi thriller with a strong
slant on time travel, causality, and family drama.
Target Demographic
Men and Women between ages 18-24 living in metropolitan areas. Narrative
resonates with casual sci-fi fans.
Length
10 levels/episodes. Each episode should take approximately 20 minutes to
complete. Some levels will impose a one-hour time limit.
General Information
Echo aims to provide sci-fi fans an opportunity to delve in a rich, sci thriller
narrative without sacrificing time to explore and engage in active city life. This
also provides an opportunity for organizations to work with city municipalities
and tourism centers.
STORY SYNOPSIS
Echo is largely episodic. Players may play each level at their own leisure.
However, once an episode begins, they cannot pause the experience. Each
timed episode must be completed within an hour. Most will last for an estimated
20 minutes.
Episode 1
The first episode establishes the story’s narrative premise.
Upon opening the Echo application, the player reads that a temporal
phenomenon known as The Wave has already destroyed multiple timelines. As
The Wave ripples through space and time, extinguishing thousands of parallel
universes; it now threatens to breach into the player’s world.
The application instructs the player to locate Echoes, small tears in timespace where ghost images from defunct timelines spill into the players world.
These portals present an opportunity for the player to learn about alternate
Earths and the nature of The Wave. The player must then seal these smaller rifts
before they expanded into The Wave.
The Echo application then explains that scientists have managed to send
this application across time and space. The Silencer application allows players
to detect, witness, and silence Echoes. Lastly, the application prompts to locate
the first Echo. The player receives a GPS location and a photo of Pershing
Square. To discover the Echo, the player must obtain the exact vantage point of
the photograph.
Episode 2
The second episode focuses on establishing the pacing and mechanisms
of the game.
As the player nears Pershing Square, Echo brings up a video of another
player’s experience. This first-person POV footage documents a parallel universe
player’s journey towards this particular echo. From a design perspective, the
footage offers suggestions on how to reach the echo. From a narrative
standpoint, the found footage emphasizes that others have attempted and
failed to silence the Echoes and prevent The Wave. The Silencer then goes into
a game mode, where it begins to record video.
If the player successfully locates the vantage point of the photo, the
application overlays video and audio from previous timelines. In the case of the
Pershing Square episode, the application shows the destruction of Los Angeles
and introduces the recurring characters, Sarah and Ben. Players can seal an
echo by breaking the vantage point.
Episode 3
An episode with multiple Echoes. This episode establishes the primary
gameplay challenge players: time management. Players must locate all echoes
within certain amount of time. Urgency may cause players to silence Echoes
quickly.
Episode 4
This level is designed to be unwinnable. By forcing players to lose and
restart the episode, players must watch their previous run as footage from
transmitted from another timeline. See walkthrough for more information.
Episode 5
Players learn that while silencing Echoes prevents The Wave from reaching
their world, each timeline inevitably spawns its own Wave. An entity known as
The Mother creates a Wave in each world. In addition to prevent The Wave by
silencing echoes, the player must now prevent their world’s Mother from
spawning a new Wave.
Episode 6
By listening to Echoes, the players learn that The Mother is actually Doctor
Zhonya, a scientist specializing in time and space. Her husband and children die
in a car accident caused by faulty breaks. In her grief, Doctor Zhonya begins
researching time travel in earnest. While it’s unclear whether or not she achieves
time travel, her research eventually catalyzes the technology that accidentally
triggers the Wave.
Episode 7
Players learn the identity of Xander Glass, Doctor Zhonya’s husband. They
also obtain his e-mail address. They also witness a conversation between Ben
and Sarah that suggests that e-mailing Mr. Glass with a warning would prevent
his death, ending the event that would catalyze The Wave
Episode 8
The Echoes continue. Through listening to the Echoes, players learn from
Sarah and Ben that the Echoes will never stop. They believe the Echoes will
persist because something has already crossed into their world from another
timeline, creating a path that can never be closed.
Episode 9
The Echoes reveal Ben and Sarah struggling to close all the Echoes in their
world. In the end, the beleaguered duo seemed resigned to their fate.
Whatever has been transmitted to the world cannot be undone. The Echoes will
continue; for their world, the end is inevitable. They then transmit their footage
through the Silencer to another timeline, hoping their information will help end
The Wave.
Episode 10
Another unwinnable episode. Players should realize by now that the Echo
application’s very existence has created a pathway between timelines, and
that the Echoes will not stop. When the player loses at the end of the episode,
they are once again prompted to transmit their data to another timeline. If they
do transmit the timeline, they will repeat episode 10 ad infinitum. If they choose
not to transmit, the application will thank them for their sacrifice. Though their
world will perish, by choosing not to transmit the data, the players have broken
the cycle.
SETTING
Echo’s presents participants with an opportunity to visit popular sights
around the city while engaging in a science fiction thriller game. Its experience
will prove optimal for college-aged adults who lead actives lives but also crave
epic narratives. Echo gives participants a chance to observe and partake in a
show such as Heroes without tying down players to a bedroom.
While the locations will vary per city, each variation of Echo should keep
these principals in mind when setting locations for episodes. Locations must be:
1) Famous or easily recognizable.
2) Accessible by public transportation
3) Age appropriate
4) Easily navigable
For the Echo: Los Angeles, episodes will take place in the following areas:
Episode 2:
Pershing Square, Downtown Los Angeles
Episode 3:
Walt Disney Concert Hall, Downtown Los Angeles
Episode 4:
Hollywood and Highland, Hollywood
Episode 5:
LACMA, Beverly Hills
Episode 6:
Wiltern Theater, Koreatown
Episode 7:
Doheny Library, the University of Southern California
Episode 8:
3rd and Promenade, Santa Monica
Episode 9:
Union Station, Downtown Los Angeles
Episode 10: Griffith Park Obser vatory, Los Feliz
Doheny Library
www.usc.edu
CHARACTERS
Sarah Johnson
A fiery graduate student in her mid-twenties,
Sarah appears in various flashbacks presented in the
Echoes. Players witness Sarah grapple with the
magnitude of the task and the odd predicament of
mourning for her other selves. Sarah speaks honestly
www.people.com
about her feelings. At times, she seems defeated,
knowing that other versions of herself have tried and failed. However, she
remains determined to contribute to the cessation of The Wave.
Ben de Guzman
Sarah’s close friend. In his early twenties, a recent
college graduate. Serving as a foil to Sarah, Ben handles
situations calmly. On the surface, he may strike players as
even-tempered in comparison to the emotionally frank
Sarah. However, he lacks her emotional resilience.
Whereas Sarah accepts the inevitable end with
nbclatino.files.wordpress. resignation, Ben goes catatonic.
com
James Wright
A grant writer in early thirties, James works
closely with his colleague Doctor Zhonya. Bored
with his life as a grant writer, James likes to goad
his friends and colleagues into extraordinary
undertaking. In one of his flights of fancy, he
suggests to Doctor Zhonya that her current line of
www.aceshowbiz.com
research borders on time travel.
Doctor Zhonya
A physicist in her late forties, Doctor Zhonya
presents herself as a logical and straightforward
researcher. At work, she keeps a respectful distance
from her colleagues, reserving more affectionate
behavior for her two children. Her relationship with
http://women.nasa.gov/
her husband has strained, as he envies her success
and resents his own professional struggles.
After the deaths of her children and husband, the doctor struggles to
reconcile their passing. As a distraction, she begins to research time travel in
earnest. While it is unknown if she actually accomplished such a feat, her
research and experimentation undoubtedly led to the development of The
Wave.
Xander Glass
Doctor Zhonya’s distant husband, Xander
recently lost his job as a software engineer. He
spends much of his day in a daze, reflecting on
squandered youth, his underwhelming
achievements. He harbors jealousy towards his
wife’s brilliance and often fantasizes of having an
www.fanpop.com
affair.
Though he loves his children, he neglects many duties as a father. This
leads to simple oversights – such as forgoing regular car maintenance – that
eventually lead to the demise of his family.
WALKTHROUGH
The walkthrough follows the experience of Katie, a 21 year old college
undergrad at the University of Southern California. Katie is a casual fan of
science fiction and has a basic understanding of time travel and alternate
universe conventions. Katie is new to the city of Los Angeles and is looking for
different ways to explore the city.
Stage 1: Notification
Katie receives a pop-up notification during her chemistry class. The Echo
application reminds her that the next set of echoes has been located. The
application urges her to seal them when she has the time.
After class, she opens the application. The app identifies her as Katie, of
timeline 3001.
From the main menu, she navigates to the Echo Location function. The
locator is a full screen map, which circles the area where the next set off Echoes
will manifests. It also holds images of the Echoes’ epicenters.
The next cluster of echoes will manifest at the metro station near
Hollywood and Western.
Stage 2: The Approach
The next morning, Katie hops on the red line towards Hollywood and
Western Boulevard. She plugs in her headphones to take advantage of the
holographic sound. She’s also wearing a smartwatch, which will enhance the
experience. As she nears the location, she receives another pop-up notification.
It’s a transmission from alternate timelines.
She opens up her Data Archives, and notices that she has received
footage from “Timeline #2452.” The video plays automatically. She watches the
footage of another player walking to the various epicenters of various Echoes.
She takes careful note of the route the previous player took; walking up the
escalators, and northwest towards the intersection of Western of Boulevard.
The video jumps to another segment, were the same player walks towards
for the next Echo in the area. It looks like a theater, but Katie isn’t quite sure
which theater. The footage cuts out early.
Katie emerges from the train, as the application switches to Silencer Mode
Stage 3: Silencer Mode
As Katie emerges from subway station, Silencer Mode starts to record.
Looking at the screen, she notices in the center of screen the faint silhouette of
a Ralph’s sign and building. She knows she must line up the silhouette of the
Ralph’s building and sign with the actual physical location.
She looks to her smartwatch. It’s compass points towards the Ralph’s
across the street. She walks across the street, and after walking around the
parking lot, manages to find the vantage point where she can line up the
silhouette on her screen with the actual sign and building.
The timer starts; Silencer states that she has thirty minutes to close all the
Echoes in the area. Failure would trigger the Wave and destroy her world. It
gives her the option of starting later, but she chooses to go ahead.
The app reads the Ralph’s sign and building as markers, much as most
other applications would read a QR code, and then overlays ghost images of
an alternative timeline. The Echo begins to manifest; Katie hears the voices of
another world, one shred apart by The Wave, slowly start to filter through her
headphones. Through holophonic sound, she can hear a pair of footsteps
approaching the area.
Stage 4: The Echo
Katie sees a woman, Sarah, walk onto the screen.
“I thought we had gotten to all of them,” Sarah cursed as her partner,
Ben, follows her. “But there are more of them!”
Katie knows if she moves the camera away from the epicenter, the Echo
will close. If she closes the Echo early, she will have more time to find the others.
But silencing the Echo will also silence the afterimages of Ben and Sarah. Katie
waits a little while longer, hoping for clues about the Echoes and the nature of
the Wave phenomena.
Katie hears Sarah’s voice shake with panic.
“We just don’t have enough information,” Sarah laments. “You’d think
that the alternate-reality me would take better footage --”
“I think I found the next one, by Hollywood and Highland. Maybe the next
Metro stop… I think it’s Grauman’s …”
The timer, and perhaps Sarah’s anxiety, force Katie’s hand. She taps on
the screen to close the Echo; Sarah and Ben fade away as a serene blue light
washes over the scene. She puts her phone in her pocket, and shuffles back
towards the Metro Station. Ben had dropped the name of the theater –
Grauman’s – during the Echo. Katie deduces that the theater in the transmitted
footage from earlier is actually Grauman’s Chinese theatre.
As she emerges from the Hollywood and Highland stop, she spots the
theater. She notices that the image on the Echo application suggests that the
photo was taken from afar. Katie notices a rather expansive set of stairs across
the street the theater, so she weaves through the crowd, rushes across the street
and up the stairs to line up the shot. She has about ten minutes left as the next
Echo triggers.
Faint images and sounds from an alternative Los Angeles once again
flood into Katie’s reality. She witnesses the journey of Ben and Sarah, this time
from timeline #2456.
“These Echoes all had to start somewhere, right? We can’t just keep
chasing them. We have to find a way to end them permanently,” Sarah
laments. She continues, “We’re in timeline 2456. Does that mean… thousands of
over timelines have just been destroyed?”
“Did you hear from Carter? Did he look into The Mother?” Ben asks.
“He’s looking into it, but who knows…”
Katie watches as the pair pauses and frantically fiddles with their iPhones,
trying to track down all the Echoes.
“It’s weird. Another me has died,” Sarah confesses.
“Just don’t think about that.”
“I don’t think we’re going to make it, Ben. And if I have the choice, I’m
not going to send the data myself; I’m going to give this burden to someone
else. I don’t even know how any of this works! I don’t know how this alternative
time thing operates. Are we seeing alternative times from the exact moment or
from the past of an alternative place, or from the future, or--”
“Let’s stay the course.”
“Yeah. I think, according to the footage, the next one is back in the
Metro...--”
The two rush off screen. The holophonic sound leads Katie to believe that
they’re running towards the southwestern corner of the intersection.
Katie looks at the timer. Only five minutes remain until the Echoes in this
area grow to a critical size. Silencer Mode has already juxtaposed the image of
the next Echo epicenter onto her screen. It looks like a Metro ticketing kiosk,
which explains why Ben and Sarah ran in that direction. The compass on her
smartwatch confirms her suspicions.
Katie hurries down the stairs, but hesitates when confronted with a row of
ticketing kiosks. She’s not certain which kiosk is the epicenter. She begins to go
through them methodically, one by one, point her camera at each one. The first
three don’t active the Echo. She feels the warm flush of frustration when he her
phone’s screen sudden bursts into static.
Stage 5: Failure
Katie’s phone starts to vibrate violently, reminding her that she’s just lost. A
new text message appears on the screen.
“Global Temporal Spatial Collapse imminent. Transmit data to timeline
3002?” the Silencer application asked.
Katie presses the OK button and watches as the screen begins to show
video footage of various parts of the world rippling out of existence. Then, the
screen starts to fade into black. As the application shuts down, as Katie stands
there puzzled. Figuring she now had time to explore the area, she wanders back
up the stairs to explore the ragtag group of performers gathering around the
busy Hollywood and Highland intersection.
Stage 6: Restarting as a New You
As Katie wanders among the crowd, her phone vibrates. The Silencer
application wants her attention once again. Katie obliges, and the Silencer
application greets as Katie, Timeline 3002.
“ECHOES DETECT IN YOUR IMMEDIATE VICINITY. DO YOU WISH TO PURSUE?”
Katie taps “Ok”.
“INCOMING TRANSMISSION FROM TIMELINE 3001.”
Katie rummages through the application and finds the newly received
transmission. As usual, the application plays POV footage from another player.
Katie watches as the footage gets to the Metro kiosks, where she failed. As the
mysterious player from 3001 checks each kiosk, one by one, it dawns upon Katie:
This was her footage.
Or rather, this was footage from Katie of 3001, who had perished when
the Wave broke through the untended Echoes. She muses that she is now
acting as Katie of timeline 3002, and must complete the mission entrusted to her
by Katie of 3001.
Katie returns to the kiosks, and resumes from where she last left off. As
Katie of 3002, she had already accomplished all that her timeline 3001 partner
achieved. She can continue from exactly where she left off. Looking at the Echo
app’s data archives, she confirms this. Continuing her methodical search of the
Metro’s kiosk, she eventually stumbles upon the correct kiosk. The timer starts,
renewed for an hour, as the latest Echo reverbs.
This time, Katie peers into an unknown timeline. The Echo application does
not state which timeline. Katie doesn’t hear the voices Ben and Sarah. Instead,
she witnesses a conversation between a woman in her late 40s and a younger
man, presumably in his late-twenties or early-thirties.
“Listen James, I don’t the grant committee would fund a project about
time travel. You’re make our work sound like science fiction. Let’s not
sensationalize the research,” reasoned the older woman, or rather, her
afterimage.
“What you’re proposing is revolutionary! Why hide it? You’re making leaps
in discovery--”
“—hold that thought. I have to take this call.”
Curious, Katie delays silencing the Echo. She listens as the older woman
walks out of view.
The holographic sounds relay a wail Jack runs off screen as well.
“Doctor Zhonya…?”
“Please, you must be mistaken…”
Katie continues to listen as the doctor’s meek protest ebb into hiccups
and sobs. James goes silent, and slowly the ghostly images and sounds fade.
Stage 7: Episode Conclusion
In the aftermath of the Echo, the Echo application chirps in. It
congratulates Katie on successfully sealing the Echoes in the area and
preventing the Wave for forming. Katie looks through the Echo Location
submenu again, as the next episode’s Echoes begin to manifests. She then
rummages through the Data Archives and spots multiple parallel universe Katies
as Echo application wielders.
She decides to play another day, as she resurfaces on the streets of
Hollywood.