Echo Chunk, a company that is building Wordle-styled daily chess puzzle game Echo Chess, has raised $1.4 million in pre-seed from a16z Speedrun (Andreessen Horowitz’s early-stage games accelerator), founder of Zynga Mark Pincus, South Park Commons (SPC), Opendoor founder and CEO Eric Wu and Stef Corazza, the head of Generative AI at Roblox.
Sami Ramly, founder and CEO of Echo Chunk, told TechCrunch that the primary reason for taking the investment is to enable the community to create more puzzles with AI. While the company is concentrating on Echo Chess for now, it plans to release more titles in the future.
Josh Lu, partner at Andreessen Horowitz, said that the company has successfully attempted a fresh take on chess. Plus, the community is churning out more content with AI as a co-pilot.
“We firmly believe that Al will enhance the ingenuity of game designers, and the Echo Chess team has demonstrated this brilliantly with their debut title by using AI to put a fresh spin on their daily game. They’ve done so really quickly with a very small team and have already built a passionate community of players and speedrunners with fresh content every day. That’s something that would have been extremely difficult a few years ago,” he said in a statement.
Echo Chess, the game
During the pandemic, the word-based puzzle game Wordle took off. Eventually, The New York Times bought it. Echo Chess is trying to make chess more enjoyable for a wider audience with its version of daily puzzles.
Instead of playing against an opponent, players have to capture all the pieces on the board to complete the challenge. There are three modes: daily classic, daily epic and blitz mode. The last mode is a time-bound mode where you have to defeat the board and capture more pieces to earn more time with the next board.
Ramly, former head of product at VR startup Wevr, didn’t give out any user numbers but said that many streamers and creators are making content around the game.
Founding the startup
Ramly told TechCrunch he had been obsessed with strategy games since childhood. Last year, he thought there was a real opportunity to introduce the game in a different way with recent advancements in AI. Plus, the new approach could reduce user learning time.
“I thought AI could improve the game design as the game evolves. You can use the game maker to iterate on the best strategy and puzzle games. With this thought process, I built this game and started the company,” he said.
Usage of AI
The company is using AI for three things. Currently it is powering the blitz mode to create new board on the go.
Echo Chunk is also exploring the use of AI for multiplayer modes, new game modes and new games in general. The third area is assisting users in creating new boards and puzzles. This Echo Maker platform is currently being tested in alpha by select community members.
Ramly said that the company doesn’t use any user data to train the AI but rather uses a game state with a mix of supervised and deep learning approach. He is very enthusiastic about the use cases of AI as a creation co-pilot for users.
“One thing we found super powerful is that if you combine the magic of what we do best as humans, which is adding character and soul to games, then you can use AI as a feedback loop and power level makers and game designers to create new things,” Ramly said.
The road ahead
The company currently consists of four people, but it is trying to hire new folks with backgrounds in gaming and tech.
At the moment, Echo Chunk is not thinking about monetization and wants to keep the web-based version free to play. Ramly noted that even when the company starts monetizing games, it will make sure that the approach doesn’t create a detrimental game experience.
Investors like Pincus of Zynga and Roblox Studio head Corazza see merit in the startup’s approach of using AI to create new puzzles.
“AI has the potential to be the best copilot for game design. Echo Chess is a great example for this with its infinite Blitz Mode, and I can see this same approach enhancing an endless variety of user-generated maps dreamed up by its players of all age groups,” Corazza said in a statement.
