The Indie Informer

The first half of The Star Named EOS is a gleaming puzzle mystery to rival this year’s best, and reaches out to brush the heights of games like Lorelei and the Laser Eyes. Its brilliance as the game travels on, though, begins to twinkle — sometimes shining with artful challenges and at other times becoming eclipsed by opaque guidance. However, the dazzling beauty of its visuals never dimed. The game’s plush, hand-drawn aesthetic wrapped around me like a blanket, making it easier to shrug off the more tedious moments.

Part of the reason the game’s opening is so ethereal is because it’s a dream within a dream. My earlier preview details how, in the initial moments of my hands-on, I wake from a swirling, painterly world to a more grounded reality of my childhood bedroom. There are clues, however, that something even more illusory than my dream is going on.

After completing my first set of immaculately nested, point-and-click-like puzzles — which wonderfully achieve the effect of making me feel astute while being fairly straightforward — I simply appear in a new location. The developers play with gaming conventions of fast forwarding to central moments to keep me from looking too deeply into why this might be until — after several more impeccable puzzle-solving, narrative-driven scenes — actual reality crashes from the sky like a meteor.

Unfortunately, this climactic narrative moment intersected with a communication descent. For the first time in the short game, which only took three hours to complete, I was at a loss for what to do. My resulting frustration dampened the emotional impact of this otherwise dramatic scene, and there would be times later where a lack of signposting would induce me to lose my way — literally.

The Star Named EOS‘ moments of exasperation paled in comparison to its radiant artwork. Its puzzles, when it dawned on me what I needed to do, had me glowing with a sense of achievement. Narratively, the game plays strikingly with mystery and expectation. Perhaps the best summary of the experience comes from the game itself. “When you gaze at the stars, the stars also gaze at you.”