Echo Buttons are one of the stranger bits of hardware to come out of the Amazon labs in recent memory. Announced alongside the latest Echos, the little light up devices are designed to bring interactive game play to the Alexa Echo system.
The company’s already announced a handful of compatible titles, and it seems that list is about to get a bit longer, as it opens up a beta version of the Gadgets Skill API for the hardware.
Developers can platform to associate button presses with different skills and send light up animation to the hardware. A preview version of the API lead to the development of a number of experiences for the two for $20 peripherals, including light up playback of Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech and Trivial Pursuit from Hasbro. The selections are nothing if not eclectic.
The toy company is also using the announcement to launch a new game: an Echo Button version of Simon, the popular 1980s light up memory game. You can download Simon Tap now, and Alexa will list a sequence of colors the players then match. The hardware works with most of the Echo line, including, Echo, Echo Dot, Echo Show, Echo Plus and Echo Spot.