A Flash Game Dev Story — “Echoes: Operation Stranglehold”

In 2010, browser games were a popular thing. Newgrounds, Armor Games among others were destinations for millions to load up a Flash game or two and play during breaks. A typical, casual web game was a neat 5mb package with a repeating playtime of a few minutes. On July 23rd, 2010, “Echoes: Operation Stranglehold” released on Armor Games, a 29mb of a Flash game with an hour long single-player, fully-voiced campaign completely straying away from those norms. It’s been years since I played it, and longer since I reflected on the decision to make it. Echoes is a mix of sidescroller action and real-time-strategy. It’s a game series, originally designed to have 3 “Acts” but only one game was ever released. It has a small community that continues to live on to this day — with the uniting question of “when’s act 2?” It’s been 10 years and it’s time to address this pressing question. <h1>Part 1 — Echoes: Operation Stranglehold</h1> In Echoes, you play as Dem, a hero to humanity fighting off invading alien forces. As standard with Flash games, you control Dem with mouse and keyboard, but then during live action, switch between directly controlling him in combat mode to controlling your army in strategy mode. This is bundled in a direct, single axis sidescroller experience. <a href="https://medium.com/@idodev/a-flash-game-dev-story-echoes-operation-stranglehold-3d33c266c954">Learn More</a>