Echo Protocol

A small demo, and first game project for practice. 

Every 18 seconds, time fractures.

Everything you did in those 18 seconds — every turn, every dodge, every shot — comes back as an echo: a ghost of your past self that replays it perfectly, forever. By the fifth cycle there are five of you. By the tenth, ten.

You are not just surviving waves. You are choreographing a firing squad out of your own past.

The catch

A cycle spent cowering in a corner gives you a permanent ally who cowers in a corner. Two more things work against you:

• Echoes replay the weapon you had, not the one you own now — so an early recording stays weak forever.
• They can be destroyed. Enemies hunt them, and every one you lose takes its firepower with it.

So every 18 seconds you are asking one question: what do I want to be doing forever?

What's in it

• Five enemy types, from swarming Drifters to the shielded Warden elite that telegraphs a charge and detonates on recovery.
• A 17-card upgrade draft between every cycle — ricochet, homing rounds, extra dash charges, retaliation plating, and cards that reach backwards to empower echoes you already recorded.
• A phase dash with i-frames, combo scoring, and a difficulty curve that scales volume and positioning rather than raw speed.
• No win condition. Survive, score, repeat.

Controls

Move	WASD / arrow keys / left stick
Aim	Mouse / right stick
Fire	Left click / right trigger
Phase dash	Space or Shift (i-frames)
Pick upgrade	Click a card, or 1 / 2 / 3
Pause	Esc
Mute music	M

How to play

Browser — just hit Run game above. Nothing to install. Click the canvas once so it takes keyboard input, and use the fullscreen button for the best view.

Windows — download EchoProtocol-windows.zip, extract it, and run EchoProtocol.exe. Single self-contained file, no installer, no dependencies.

Heads up: the .exe is not code-signed, so Windows SmartScreen will likely say "Windows protected your PC". That warning is about the missing signature, not about anything found in the file. Click More info, then Run anyway. If you would rather not deal with that, play the browser version — it's the same game.