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It might be 2015, since that was the date referenced at the end of TJ's route, and the credits said "over the past 6 years".

Ah, but you, the reader, are not Chase, and that's the point the VN is trying to make (Jenna's route will make this clear, that's all I can say without spoiling it for you). This is one of the reasons why I love Echo, it plays around with genre conventions and standards, making you question everything after a plot twist is revealed. It is no coincidence that "real" choices are very limited in Echo, compared to most other VNs.

And with Flynn, pay attention to the moment the perspective changes. What happened to Chase that caused the change? Why did we follow Flynn and not someone else? It all has a purpose and ties together, and coming up with theories and trying to find the real reason is 60% of the fun I got from playing Echo. 

Also, notice how in Adastra you can chose Marco's name, but in Echo Chase's name is chosen for you.

PS. Echo isn't a thriller VN, I'd classify it as horror/mystery. So you'll be disappointed expecting to get a thrill out of Echo without putting any work in yourself.

Judging from Flynn's endings, I don't think Leo will show up since in one variation of the ending Leo moved out of Echo, while in another he's still in Echo.

oof, yeah Flynn is easily the best route, but is terrible to start with. Ah well, the game is better if you play the important parts over and over again, making theories and finding evidence. And Flynn's route has a lot of juicy info for theories.

Only the Jenna route is still in development, the others are basically finished. The creators has said that there won't be a complete/true story, at least not in Echo, since they have plans for a direct sequel (Arches) that follows on from Flynn's route - but they've also said that all the routes are considered canon so I don't know how that will work. 

In the meantime you can play The Smoke Room for more information and lore. It gives you quite a lot of details which you can use to piece together the mystery.

Also, you actually don't get to chose being bi or not, not really. If you chose gay, Chase will say that he doesn't feel like explaining his sexuality and that saying anything else confuses people, implying that he is still bi but just chooses not to say it. This is one of the reasons I love Echo so much: unlike most other VNs, you are not Chase, Chase is his own person with his own past and ideals. All you are doing is influencing Chase's decisions, not making them for him.

TJ is best played first imo (perhaps even before TSR), especially if you're the kind of player who likes reading in between the lines and tries to predict the twists since it's easy to get tipped off to the twist at the end of TJ's by playing the other routes first. The other reason to play TJ first is because out of all the routes, up until the end it felt like a low budget horror B-movie to me (as someone who played it first), which really plays around with your expectation for the ending. I think if you don't play it first, it looses that B-movie feel and the ending won't really subvert expectations and not be as memorable.

Route 65 I would say is completely optional, and only really matters for Jenna's route. And that's not to mention that a lot of it is repeated in Jenna's route too.

And just to be clear, the devs didn't recommend that order, just that they agree with it.

Individually, the facts point to TJ being the one who wrote the letters, but taken together they begin to clash with each other. When TJ attacked Carl, it ruled out the possibility that TJ was aware that he was the one who wrote the letters (since he wouldn't have directed his anger specifically at Carl in that case because he would have known the letter was fake). 

However, this then throws the other parts of the theory into question. If TJ did wrote it all unconsciously then he would have had to write the letters in Sydney's style, made the letters look old, go around town to place the letters, all the while unconscious. It was also strongly hinted that the letter in the school building was unnatural, and that it would have been looted years ago if it was really that old (which puts doubt onto the theory that TJ made the letter before the trip). 

Then there's the matter of the clues themselves. The clues are passively hostile towards Chase, suggesting active dislike or hate towards Chase (which only really Sydney and perhaps Flynn feels that way, more on that later). Given what we know, I find it hard to believe that TJ would come to hate Chase subconsciously. TJ has always hated Sydney so there would be almost no reason to hate Chase after Chase saved him from drowning. And if it was subconscious, we would have seen some hint of the hate bubbling up into his consciousness every now and again. TJ may have held the pain and guilt, but hate just doesn't make sense for him.

"if anything the entity controlling Chase was pushing him towards concealing the truth not revealing it"

Did it though? We don't know for sure if TJ would have told Flynn the truth, all we have to go on is the entity's words (and it lied about Flynn knowing Chase's secret, and also about breaking the cycle by killing Flynn). And the reason it helped Chase was probably because it didn't care about revealing the truth, but in getting hysteria events to happen. Taking the other routes into account, TJ's route is very unique because of 2 things: 1) it's the only route in which the hysteria didn't happen in 2015, and 2) it's the only route in which the entity speaks directly to Chase. 

With the hysteria, I think it's because this is the only route in which the group is completely destroyed, splintered apart. So if the truth were to be revealed, it may not have been enough to cause the required emotional reaction for the hysteria that the entity wanted - so the entity decided to cut its losses and prepare for the next hysteria (by creating a new secret for Chase to hide). Evidence for this can be found with Flynn. As he was dragged under water he realized the truth, yet the hysteria didn't happen because his emotions alone wasn't enough (based on information from Murdoch's route in TSR, the entity feeds on emotions).

As for the other unique thing with the route, the entity during its talk with Chase admits that the town is almost saved, that it may actually survive. Or in other words, its plan was almost foiled. From that information, it is my current theory that it was the socket monster who wrote the letters. 

Remember how the clues contained a dislike for Chase that only Sydney had? What if it was actually Sydney who wrote them as the socket monster. From Flynn's route we know that the socket monster is an amalgamation of multiple people/entities. And just before Flynn was absorbed himself he got to meet Sydney, suggesting that like Flynn, Sydney was absorbed into the monster. And we know from Jenna that the monster has always been there for her and protected her, which would give it a motive to foil the other entity's plans. Looking at the result of the letters, the letter was at least successful in getting Jenna checked out of Echo early and out of harm's way.

And if it was the socket monster, a couple of other random details just falls perfectly into place. Being a supernatural entity, the monster could have easily forged the letters on the spot and made them look old and placed them anywhere anytime. Being another entity like the one that spoke to Chase would have also given it the power to oppose another powerful and manipulative entity.

That said, the theory does have a couple of small holes that I've yet to work out. The biggest one would be how close the letters drove the town to hysteria. If the socket monster's aim was to protect Jenna and perhaps stop the hysteria from happening, it came very close to triggering the hysteria through the final letter. If Chase hadn't swapped out the final letter, there was a real chance that the reveal would have caused a hysteria similar to the one in Flynn's route. So does that mean the monster knew that Chase would swap the letter? Or did it manipulate Chase into swapping the letter? The other issue is that if Sydney is conscious as the monster, why does it protect Jenna? Why not someone else like Flynn?

Of course, my theories regarding the entities are far from conclusive. We'll likely have to wait for Arches to get some concrete information on them :/.

A lot of it is royalty free music but there are also a number of original tracks, mainly from Abyuse and Moe. Moe also works on the music for Khemia and TSR.

https://anthemics.bandcamp.com/music

https://mobile.twitter.com/moemusician?lang=en

Couldn't find anything for Abyuse though, it seems like they deleted their profiles.

Yeah that was my theory too, and the way the drawing in the final letter seems to have been drawn in TJ's style (like the one he drew at the diner). However one major problem with the theory is that if it was TJ who drew it, it wouldn't have made sense for him to go berserk on Carl at the end. Also it wouldn't have made sense that TJ did it in terms of the timeline. Chase was pretty much always with TJ all throughout the route so he wouldn't have had the time to sneak away and set it all up.

At most, TJ could have drawn the final drawing, and then one of the entities took it and put it in the last area as a way to trigger the hysteria. The evidence for this comes from Flynn's route, when the gang found out that Chase was the killer and the hysteria began immediately (which we're assuming is what the entity wants). So when Chase swapped out the drawings, the hysteria was narrowly avoided and the entity was forced to directly manipulate Chase (through the mirror). As a result the hysteria was delayed to 2017 based on the epilogue. 

Whether or not the entity is evil is up to debate. It could also be interpreted as the entity has absorbed Sydney before and now is absorbing Flynn. Why this is the case is not clear. But we do see that Flynn sometimes can make his own decision as the socket monster, so it could be interpreted that the entity needed Flynn to help it protect Jenna and/or oppose the other eviler entities.

It's never made clear who wrote it, but it definitely wasn't Flynn since Flynn didn't recognize the real final letter when Chase showed it at the lake. Chase only made the fake letter. Therefore I speculate that it's likely created by one of the mysterious Echo entities, which would explain why the letter could look old and is written in Sydney's style but touched on evens after his death.

I'd say that there still is the mystery/suspense factor if you play TJ first. In this case, the question isn't about whether it was Chase  who killed Sydney, but it becomes a question of who wrote the letter and treasure hunt.  After playing the other routes, we know that multiple monsters exist within Echo and so every time something supernatural happens we, the reader, just blame the monsters. But since they aren't explored in TJ's route, my suspicion bounced around between Carl, Flynn, TJ, and even Chase himself. So it was very surprising to learn that I had failed to consider the possibility of Sydney (as the socket monster) or another monster being the author of the letter. And it made me immediately want to go back and try other choices and routes to see if I can learn more about the monsters.

well it could also be a zelda situation where you have multiple timelines

afaik there's only one Flynn ending, and the reason it's not clear is because from what I understand they're planning to follow up the route with the next VN in the series called Arches

I'd recommend new players to play TJ's route first though. It only really works if you play it first because (as someone who played it first) all the way through it forces you to think about what kind of horror story it is, whether the voices are real, and the plot twist at the end is very satisfying without being tipped off by the other routes.

It's because of all of those things that make it tame. Those events make it hard for the reader to relate and therefore the psychological side of the horror is a lot downplayed here. I love Echo because of the psychological horror and unlike the other routes Leo's route is almost regular horror (which don't really scare me at all). It also doesn't involve the Echo mysteries much compared to the other routes, so if you play it first it doesn't give you that itch to replay the other routes to figure out the entire mystery.

Technically Khemia is Adastra 2 since it takes place pretty much immediately after.

I think Leo is one of the tamer routes. For new players I always recommending starting with TJ's route first. Flynn's route is also very interesting, and a good followup to TJ's route.

But to be fair, Kud was a side character and we didn't get to spend much time with him. I'm liking him so far, I just wish/hope he'll be in the side stories or prequels or in the other paths.

I dunno, I think it's thematically more appropriate leaving him there. It was his choice to stay behind, and he's the one with the gun. And coming back would have gone against the choice of telling him that it is over. It also doesn't fit with the earlier decision about the positive of being with Leo vs the negative of being in Echo.