Featured during the November 2026 Xbox Partner Preview, Cococucumber revealed its next project, Echo Generation 2. The Toronto-based developer sat down with Console Creatures ahead of the game’s reveal on Thursday to discuss the sequel, why the studio decided to do a follow-up, and how initiatives like ID@Xbox help developers bring their games to the market.
In our conversation with Martin Gauvreau, Game Director, Lead Programmer and Vanessa Chia, Game Director, Producer, the pair sound immensely excited to reveal their new game and go into detail about how and why it came to fruition, the references and inspirations they drew on, and the incredible music featured in Echo Generation.
Console Creatures: So right off the bat, thank you for this opportunity. I’m always happy to talk to another Canadian, whether it’s a game developer or creative. I’m so glad to speak to you. What made the studio [Cococucumber] decide to focus on a follow-up to Echo Generation rather than something new? What new mechanics have been added?
Martin Gauvreau:
I mean, it’s a great question that we even ask ourselves, you know, like why do a sequel when we could do anything else? Or why a sequel to that game? Why not a sequel to Riverbond or Ravenlok? Mostly, I think it’s because nobody is forcing us. No, we’re independent, so we can pick and choose what we want to work on. In a setting where you have a publisher or your studio is owned by another entity, we did present a version of our game to various publishers, including some well-known big publishers and indie publishers, but they all turned it down. So we decided that we’re still gonna do it anyway.
These studios look at numbers, data, and vectors of information about the type of game. So, for us, of course, we have to consider that aspect because, eventually, if you make too many games, you still need to make sure what you make is gonna be interesting for the people, but we felt that maybe we saw something in the sequel that sometimes it’s hard to ignore.
In the early prototype or pitch, the game will go through a journey, transforming into something else by the time it’s completed. So just to be totally fair, some of the early prototypes we presented are very different than the final result. I think the multiple rejections also made us feel we might not be doing it correctly. We still wanted to make a sequel, but we modified many aspects to take that journey. So we listened to that feedback to make the sequel feel right. We did a lot of remixing along the way, but at the end of the day, what we make is 100 percent independent. There’s no publisher, there’s no one telling us you have to do it this way; you cannot do things this way.
It was just a matter of what we wanted to do next. We started this game practically as soon as Echo Generation finished because we had many ideas we brainstormed that didn’t make it into Echo Generation, and we just felt like we wanted to keep building on them. Sometimes, as a developer, you want a new challenge, you want to try different things, which is what we saw the project as. It’s also something we’re working on to ensure you don’t need to have played the first game to play the second.
Console Creatures: The benefit of, like you said, being independent is that you have that flexibility to say, “We can do this game next, or we want to do this idea.” That’s more to your point in how today, publishers are chasing specific trends, which doesn’t seem to work. What were the lessons that you were able to implement from these rejections from these publishers to what you’re developing with the sequel? Any challenges in deciding to do a sequel?
Martin Gauvreau: Oh, that’s always going to be an uphill battle. But every rejection is very helpful, and it helps us accept that we’re often too close to a project we think is fantastic. If other people are like, “Well, maybe it’s not that amazing,” it’s like being doused with cold water, right? These rejections make you look at the game you want to make more objectively.
Rejection from a publisher won’t necessarily tell you precisely all the details of why a project is refused for support. There’s a part of it that is trying to second-guess and be like, “OK, well, I know I really like this part of the game, but maybe it’s through this other part of the game that we could improve upon.” We went as far as working on a prototype for some months, and then we just discarded everything. We just started from scratch. We decided that what we had worked on was probably the wrong direction to go.
We made something that was way too different. It’s OK to do a sequel that takes some risk and does something different, but it wasn’t even a sequel anymore. It was like, what’s the connection? You still need to keep the feeling, I think, the general feeling that you’re playing something in the same universe, whether it’s a connection visually or mechanically with the story. In the end, we were all happier that things unfolded the way they did.
After being denied many times, we worked to improve the game, and we’re delighted with it. You never know what people will respond to what you’re making.
Console Creatures: Has Microsoft helped in developing your next game?
Vanessa Chia: Echo Generation came out on Game Pass on launch day one. We have a lot, a lot of fans on Xbox, and I think for us it’s a no-brainer, and it feels right at home to bring the sequel to Game Pass. Day one as well. So we’re pleased with that. Xbox has been wonderful, a great partner for us as well, just through the ID@Xbox program, but also through something like this, where we have marketing support to organize interviews with you.
And media outlets showcase and share the game before it comes out. So yeah, we’re really happy to work with Xbox, and for us, yeah, it’s been a great partnership not only for this game, but for many, many games as well.
Console Creatures: What are three things you can discuss today that will excite returning players? How about for newcomers?
Martin Gauvreau: With developing a sequel, problems arise and pressure with it. We now have expectations to live up to, and one of the directives we set ourselves is to go further than before and evolve things. Doing more of the same is not acceptable. One aspect is the soundtrack with the same composer, Pusher, who created something that sounds very different and its really good. We wanted music you wouldn’t get tired of, and there are a lot of tracks in various styles you’ll find and enjoy.
And the story answers many questions and expands the universe. In the first game, it was contained to a neighbourhood in a small town. Kids could walk around or use their bikes. The sequel stars the father of one of the kids and expands the world, showing what happened to the dad who disappeared for years, including his work at a secret government research center. It’s all kinds of X-Files conspiracy-type stuff you’ll encounter. Plus, we’re no longer confined to a neighbourhood as we expand the universe and head across the galaxy.
Gameplay is also much faster and more exciting, but it’s still turn-based. We wanted to keep the challenge and improve upon it because by the end of Echo Generation, you were powerful, with powerful skills and companions who could easily defeat enemies. You are inevitably stuck with the same one or two moves then. Now we want players to reshuffle their strategies and learn new ways to fight the different bosses. This time, our battle system is more complete with faster animations, and the pacing feels more real-time than ever before.
And of course, we’re taking the player on the much more dangerous journey. So the first game, it was kids, so there’s just so much you can do with kids, you know, you don’t want to have something too bloody. Now, with the father, we can keep going and expand on what we can do with the story.
Console Creatures: What films, TV and books would you say helped inspire your vision for Echo Generation 2?
Martin Gauvreau: We looked at several things for the first game, like Spielberg in the 80s, where you have kids and suburbs or like Stephen King. We looked at supernatural events in small towns. We look at movies like The Goonies, and it worked for the first game. Now, we’re looking to do something scarier and more violent, drawing more on sci-fi horror as a reference.
Think Event Horizon, where you question whether you’re in hell or not. The idea of cosmic horror is interesting: a God-like entity that exists far in the cosmos, where we don’t know where they are, and these beings don’t know we exist (for the better), and what happens when we contact those forces.
Also, again, we look at properties like The X-Files, and at one point, it feels like maybe we’re a bit like in some space adventure like Star Wars, but I think it’s important to keep this duality of light and darkness. We don’t want a game that’s super depressing and heavy. We also want to balance it out with fun little moments to contrast it.
We have a hub where you can eat ramen at a shop and then refill your items before returning to the story. So we make sure to keep the kind of coziness we sometimes find in the first game. Although we explore a much scarier kind of minds, you know, horror and deformation, like The Fly from [David] Cronenberg, or John Carpenter’s The Thing.
Console Creatures: What inspires your art direction, and how will it change for the sequel? You’ve mentioned before the studio likes to experiment – how does that factor in Echo Generation 2?
Martin Gauvreau: Looking at the sequel, we reviewed everything up to that point, including the art direction.
And Echo Generation came out, a lot of other games also saw the announcement or release of fantastic pixel art voxel games, and we got inspired by them. So we challenged ourselves and evolved. We needed to see how far we could push modern rendering techniques and post-processing while still keeping this ritual vibe.
We adjusted the scaling of the head relative to body size. In the first game, it felt a bit more exaggerated, and we went in a more realistic direction for Echo Generation 2‘s scaling, not only for the characters but also for the environments. That is just one of the design guidelines we set, along with guidelines for common elements like patterns and colours.
We also looked at the mysteries behind the characters and their connection to the bosses. Probably more than half, or at least all the main enemies and minibuses, now have goals and connections to the story among themselves. That was something we revisited a lot because in the first game, the bosses are mostly mindless entities trying to kill you. Now bosses are smarter with goals that can outsmart you.
[This interview has been edited for clarity and length.]
