#echoic memory

[springbreakerrs]

(ranboo voice) “i cant believe porn is legal now”

-loren 2026

[hermitprivilege]

the thing about having a nearly-echoic memory is that i'll remember a song i heard in a movie 12 years ago right down to the microphone quality and that one annoying noise that was in the background at that one part, and i'll mention it to someone who i know has heard the song too because they were sitting next to me watching the movie, but they'll just be like "oh i don't remember that song at all"

[miranova23]

Me, innocuously writing/editing:

My brain, everytime I come back past this line while editing:

OTL *siiigh* Rapunzel... Rapunzel, that's nowhere near your line. Though I suppose it counts as still not what he wants to hear. 🙄

[lapsedgamer]

Echoic Memory (Playdate)

This little puzzle really got its teeth in to me over the past week or so. As mentioned in my earlier post, the goal is to match the sound you’re given to a specific sample on a board, with the catch that the samples are distorted and you have to tune that distortion to recognise the audio. There’s an unscripted pair-matching mode but the centre of this game is a really nicely pitched Story Mode, where you gradually learn about a rebellious group of AI speakers as you’re exposed to larger boards, trickier kinds of distortion and wider varieties of music.

There’s a nice discussion of how the level progression was designed in the corresponding episode of the Playdate podcast, but suffice to say it’s very well calibrated for difficulty. I was pleasantly surprised to realise that my own echoic memory - my ability to keep sounds in memory after hearing them - was improving as the game went on. I think the enjoyment factor actually peaks in the penultimate stage, where you’re getting the biggest variety of sample types and not just the hardest ones, but it gave the finale a bit of a victory-lap feel.

Throughout, it was quite nice to realise how audio can gain or lose musicality as it’s warped. Many of the samples actually had a particular melodic quality even with one or more different levels of distortion applied, like tuning in to different resonances of the sound. This is only possible because the Playdate actually has very capable audio circuitry. I think the sizes of the samples was pushing the console a little hard through. I ran in to a chain of crashes in the final couple of stages, and it’s one of the only games that had any real loading hiccups.

I’m going to enjoy revisiting this, probably through the actual story mode. It turns out that the game has procedural storytelling which should mix up the dialogue a bit while retaining that nice gameplay progression. A real-stand out and maybe my favourite in the Playdate library so far.

[miranova23]

Back to Broken Dreams, Chapter 12: Tangled vs First Class ...and I have the wrong smartass's voice & face stuck in my head =/

Perhaps will help to start here...

then just for fun

and of course the best reprogramming...

Zac's Nerd HQ talks

Now...?

[lapsedgamer]

playdate season 1 week 4

I think they could have cut the release pace for these games in half or quarter, because I’m really falling behind. They’re delightful and deep enough to sit around for a while - although releasing two at a time, for choice is savvy. Anyway:

Spoilers!

Flipper Lifter is a really old-school endless action game where penguins want to get in a lift, then when they’re in the lift you have to crank up and down to get them to their destination floor. When you can’t keep up, you lose. Get a high enough score and a more complicated level (so far, a mine where you must also go sideways) opens up. The most playdate-apt game so far? I wish the crank had force feedback (the lift gets heavier as more penguins board).

Echoic Memory is a sound matching puzzle. A music sample plays, and you have to find the corresponding match, which may be pitch shifted and need finding with the crank. It’s implied there some sort of funny business going on with the smart speaker company you work for. This would be far less difficult if I had any grasp of music structure.

[morpsychology]

Echoic Memory [エコーイック・メモリ]ー (psychology) A type of sensory memory that briefly holds audio information for about 4 seconds.

[miranova23]

Oh no... now I'm invested... Ch11 is sitting at 21k but still a lot to get through. I just better not end up with Oops! All Accents!