The Star Named EOS Review — More than meets the eye

The Star Named EOS is a heartwarming puzzle game with a focus on photography, lost memories, and family. Developed by Silver Lining Studio, this brilliant little title comes with a surprisingly emotional story, clever puzzles, and beautiful art and voice acting. If you’re looking for a new, clever puzzle game to challenge your brain, The Star Named EOS will certainly scratch that itch.

When first booting up the game, it might be easy to discount The Star Named EOS, which is nothing more than a cute little puzzle title. I certainly made this mistake, and I don’t think it’s hard to see why. The game initially features an incredibly bright color palette, heartwarming and inspiring quotes, and what appears to be a cute story about a boy following in the footsteps of his photographer mother, recreating photos of hers as he visits the locations his mother mentions in precious letters from his childhood.

The story, however, takes an incredibly dark, heartwrenching turn, and before too long, you’ll find The Star Named EOS wrenching tears from your eyes.

I won’t do you the disservice of spoiling the story, but I will say that our protagonist, Dei, soon realizes that things aren’t quite right with his memories, and the game becomes about unraveling the truth behind your mother’s absence.

I’m not afraid to admit to you that the ending of The Star Named EOS had me crying. The story is beautiful, featuring emotional highs and lows with horrible tragedy but a bittersweet, heartwarming ending. Without using many words, The Star Named EOS manages to tell a phenomenal story, and the way the game bakes its storytelling into the environment is amazing. Striking visuals abound in the game’s beautifully hand-drawn environments, which can go from pleasant vistas to damn near horror-scapes in the blink of an eye.

Said art is, as I explained, hand-drawn images in a beautiful mix of stylized realism and the sort of “anime” look. The game is absolutely gorgeous, and being about photography, you can imagine how much time I spent just taking pictures of the environment. Said environment somehow manages to be 3d and 2d at the same time, being a flat picture that you stand in the center of and rotate around to give the illusion of being in an open space. The use of color is my favorite part of the game, with everything feeling warm and soft right up until things need to feel bleak and dark.

I initially discounted The Star Named EOS. I thought it would be the kind of overwhelmingly cute game that inexplicitly bothers my dark little heart and boy, am I glad I gave it a second chance.

The game initially had a bit of a slow start, with about four levels to play through before the presence of a mystery reveals itself and the story starts to take a more interesting turn. If you’re not great at puzzles, this slow start could take a while; The Star Named EOS has some incredibly creative puzzles, which are not difficult, per se, but hide their answers in places you probably wouldn’t expect. It goes to show the level of creativity that went into the game when I spent 30 minutes on the first level, passing over an answer repeatedly because my internal logic didn’t process that the answer would be hidden where it was.

The main theme of The Star Named EOS seems to be that there is more to life when we take the time to really look at and appreciate it. Throughout the game’s stunning environments, the solutions to puzzles are hidden in plain sight in such a way that you could easily miss them at first glance. The game awards you for taking the time to look and see what’s in front of you, inviting you to find the beauty that exists beyond a first glance.

Even if you aren’t a fan of puzzle games, I would recommend giving The Star Named EOS a try if the promise of an intriguing story entices you. While there are puzzles throughout the entire game, it only took me, a famously incompetent puzzle solver, about two hours to beat the game from start to finish, so it isn’t too great of a commitment.

There isn’t a whole lot more I can say about The Star Named EOS. This delightful, short little title is put together incredibly well, with no bugs or issues that I can really see. The biggest criticism I have is that the game might need a hint option, but again, seeing as I’m terrible at puzzles and managed to beat the game, I’m sure anyone can.

The Star Named EOS is heartwarming, heartwrenching, beautifully designed, and pleasantly short. It tells a great story with clever puzzles and never overstays its welcome. Fans of puzzle games or those just looking to experience this game’s incredible story will find a wealth of enjoyment from The Star Named EOS and may be left wanting more.

Try Hard Guides received a PC review code for this game. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! The Star Named EOS is available on Steam, GoG, Epic Games, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch.