Echoes of Mora sees you clear up a legendary lacking individuals case on this dreamy aquatic puzzler.
One factor you need to find out about me is that I really like being in water. Swimming pools, oceans, lakes, rivers – you identify it, I’m a fan. So when the chance to swim in VR by means of Selkies Interactive’s upcoming narrative puzzler arrived, I jumped on the likelihood. Echoes of Mora facilities round an imaginative younger woman known as Mora whose brother has fallen right into a cursed lake, by no means to emerge once more.
Appearing as an ethereal voyeur to this thriller, you are tasked with exploring underwater dioramas and reliving the occasions surrounding the accident, serving to save Mora’s brother. At Gamescom 2025, I spent thirty minutes testing my stride throughout this dreamy underwater setting, fixing approachable head scratchers whereas trying to find emotive narrative clues.
Earlier than leaping into the lacking individuals case, although, Echoes of Mora teaches you the best way to swim – a course of that isn’t far faraway from actuality. Emulating the multidirectional nature of motion in water, your traversal isn’t restricted to ahead and backward movement, and you may wade up and down, too. The course of your stride dictates the place you’ll finally float. From a sensible perspective, this implies holding the triggers on every controller, which shifts my arms right into a semi-cupped place, and flattening in a breaststroke-like movement.
Swimming in VR does really feel barely odd at first, requiring some follow through the demo to begin shifting in the appropriate course with out wanting like a floundering fish. Fortunately, it’s not simply aqua aerobics, and you may as well make the most of the controller grips when near a rock face to seize and pull your self across the house with extra precision. It’s price noting that whereas it’s not obtainable on this demo, Selkies Interactive plans so as to add a system so you may transition between your PC and VR saves advert hoc. So, in case your arms begin to tire, you received’t have to cease enjoying for the day and might swap over along with your save knowledge intact.
Echoes of Mora’s main gameplay facilities round accumulating glowing purple orbs known as Fragments and inserting them into portal-like Echoes. Providing a glimpse of the previous as soon as a Fragment is deposited, the Echo turns gold and opens up, permitting you to step into Mora’s recollections to relive key moments. Whereas the demo retains the lore comparatively mild, these contextual home windows do properly to introduce and humanize characters, like her lacking brother Dario, whose ambition to go away this unusual city put him at odds with the locals.
The demo featured 5 Fragments to hunt out, with some hidden in containers and others locked behind puzzle-shaped blocks. As a result of open-world nature of the sport, Echoes of Mora has its personal tackle ‘yellow paint’ within the type of shimmering fish that glide previous and within the course of your subsequent Fragment.
Nonetheless, discovering the hidden Fragments is easy sufficient due to Echoes of Mora’s highlighting system, which coats interactable objects in a neon purple glow. Sadly, this simplicity additionally extends to the puzzles, which aren’t fairly as difficult as I might hope. For instance, to unlock one of many trapped Fragments, I’ve to recreate a marble bust by sorting by means of particular person components and assembling them from a restricted variety of choices.
Elsewhere, I would like to look a small home to seek out letter blocks to spell out Mora’s identify. The approachability doesn’t take away from the sense of accomplishment, particularly because the reward of valuable lore provides to the method. Nonetheless, these on the lookout for a testing, enigma-filled VR expertise similar to The Final Clockwinder may not be happy right here.
Echoes of Mora is coming quickly, although you may play the demo now on Steam. Whereas it’s under no circumstances a seamless swimming simulator, its compelling narrative beats and dreamy world design present greater than sufficient intrigue to earn it a spot on my wishlist nonetheless.
