It cannot see you. Neither can you.

Echo Hunter is out now. It's free, and you can play it on Windows, Mac and Linux.

You are Mara Voss, a night technician at Halden Deep, an underground sound research lab. Experiment ECHO has failed. The power is out, the staff are gone, and something blind is walking the halls. It hunts by sound.

The whole facility is pitch black. The only way to see is to send out a sonar pulse that lights up the walls for a heartbeat. But every pulse is a sound, and sound is how it finds you.

What's in the game

• See with sound. Nothing is visible until your pulse sweeps through it.
• It hears you too. The hunter sends out its own sonar. If its ring reaches you with nothing in between, it knows exactly where you are. Hear the wind-up and get behind a wall.
• Four floors down, one way out. Restore the power on each floor while dodging Sentinels that shriek for the hunter, luring it away with noise makers, and hiding in lockers. It all ends in a chase through The Well.
• A story told in tapes. Dr. Varga guides you over the radio, but the tapes you find say she isn't telling you everything. There are two endings.
• Online co-op for 2 to 4 players. Host a game, share the 6-letter code, and your friends join from anywhere. Teammates can revive each other, and with proximity voice chat the monster can hear you talking.
• Open Mic mode (optional). Turn on your microphone and the monsters hear your real voice. Talk, laugh or scream and they come running.
• Upgrades between floors, checkpoints, three difficulties, full controller support, and captions with direction arrows so you can play with the sound off.

Controls

WASD to move, Shift to sneak, Space to pulse, E to interact or hide, M for the map, Esc to pause. Controllers work on every screen.

Tips

• Play with headphones. Sound direction matters.
• Pulse less than you think you need to.
• If you hear the hunter's sonar winding up, break line of sight. Now.

Thanks for playing

This is a small project made by one person, and I'd love to hear what you think. Tell me how far you got, what scared you, and anything that broke. Leave a comment below and I'll read every one.

Trailer:

SleepyGames1