About the game

Just gimme the gist!

Informed by the developer’s past career in journalism, you play as Ollie, a wannabe reporter on his first day of work experience at the Signal & Echo newspaper, in the fictional town of Runeton, England.

Ollie thought he’d be chained to his desk all day, rewriting press releases. Instead, he’s been given a real assignment: find out what happened to missing schoolgirl Iris Wood.

Using a unique text parser system, alongside traditional point-and-click mechanics, help Ollie impress his colleagues and break the story wide open!

What’s this about a ‘unique’ text parser?

Alongside the verb interactions and inventory puzzles found in many traditional adventure games, Signal and Echo: Iris is Missing uses an innovative text parser system—for conversations, searching the newspaper’s computer archive, and finding new locations on your map.

The system recognises any proper noun (i.e. capitalised noun, like John Smith, London, or The Beatles), so long as you’ve found it in-game. It also accepts the name of any hotspot, from any location, including inventory items.

This means you can ask anyone about any of these things. You'll need to take notes out in the real world, and really think for yourself! (All the puzzles use real-world logic, as opposed to cartoon or moon logic.)

I’m sold! Where can I play?

The free demo—featuring about an hour of gameplay—is available now on Steam and itch.io. Enjoy!