Win a vacation trip by catching musicians

Echo Beach is a free puzzle video game wherein you must put a stop to all music. Developed by Tim Sheinman, this 2D indie game features investigative puzzle mechanics that have you singling out pieces of evidence to find your targets.

Not to be confused with the similarly-named game by ZenLand Games, Echo Beach offers purely deductive gameplay—allowing you to parse tidbits of information from various sources on your terminal and connect them together to find a lead. This game can be played on both a desktop client and on your browser.

Music is for professional use only

In Echo Beach, you play as an office clerk of the Ministry of Human Correction. For the past ten years, music has been banned all over the world and it’s actually your job to hunt down hidden musicians by infiltrating the MusicNet—the last sanctuary for musicians who want to share their work. If you complete several missions successfully in a week, you can win a trip to the beach.

The gameplay can be confusing at first since the tutorial doesn’t clearly guide you on how to use the controls. However, the interface is easy enough to fiddle with. Plus, there’s no real fail state to trigger. You have to scan anonymous users’ forum posts and music for clues. MusicNet is an online dark website that retains old posts so you can check back on posts from eliminated targets, too.

As a puzzle game, this is heavily reliant on piecing information together. Some posts will mention small personal tidbits that you can connect with other data. The music available—all 11 original songs made for the game—also contain clues you can use. This can make the puzzles tricky since you’ll be doing a lot of back and forth, especially once more NPC forum posts are unlocked. However, it’s a refreshing challenge to undertake.

An innovative puzzle game

All in all, Echo Beach is a great little puzzle game for those who like both detective and music-themed levels. While the tutorial isn’t perfectly clear, there’s no rush in figuring out how to use the interface controls. Plus, the difficulty scales reasonably enough to both peak your curiosity and challenge your logic skills. If you like this, you can try out L.A. Noire and Scrutinized.