- Ghibli-esque visuals and an emotional soundtrack
- Intuitive mobile controls and logic-based puzzles
- Effective narrative that hits all the right beats
I’ve always felt that photographs hold a tinge of sadness no matter what they’re about. I suppose it’s the idea that it’s a snapshot of a moment that you’ll never get back – something that’s already passed you by, leaving you with nothing but memories and maybe even a scar or two along the way.
The Star Named EOS expertly wields that hint of wistfulness like a weapon – sharp, efficient and able to hit right in the feels. I knew I was getting into something evocative thanks to the short demo I played way back in early 2023, but what I didn’t expect was how much it would make an impact on me as the climax snowballed towards the end.
And quite an ending it was, given I was blinking back tears by the time the credits rolled.
Table of contents:
The Star Named EOS Visuals
What definitely equips the invisible ninjas for that onion cutting are the Ghibli-esque visuals and animations, topped with a soundtrack that’s meant to hit all the right emotional beats. It’s magical, wistful, nostalgic, and entirely too effective – I mean, how can something as simple as picking up a cup of coffee by the window in an empty cafe make such a profound impact? 
It’s all very much a well-oiled machine, because even the short voice-overs – which I had a bit of an issue with in my preview – were sprinkled just enough throughout the narrative to give it an enchanting, almost ethereal appeal. I know I complained about the English dub in the demo, but this time around, there’s an option to switch the audio to Japanese, which immediately made the experience more enjoyable for me.
The aesthetics are also pretty much on point for Silver Lining Studio, who’s responsible for making me choke back tears in Behind the Frame: The Finest Scenery.
This time around, you’ll navigate the hand-drawn world around you in first-person POV, all on a quest to follow in your mom’s footsteps and solve the mystery of her disappearance. You’ll recreate snapshots of her life that she left behind for you, almost like a trail of breadcrumbs as you’re transported to where she last was before she vanished from your life.
The Star Named EOS Gameplay
This is where the core game loop revolves around – you recreate scenes from a photograph and move from one scenario to the next, whether that’s your old childhood room or a cosy campsite under an explosion of stars in the night sky. 
There are different elements in each photo that you’ll have to scour the environment for, so if you’re eagle-eyed enough, you should easily spot a box in disarray or a wayward symbol etched onto a tree to help you solve each chapter’s puzzles.
Of course, given the nature of the painterly artwork, it can be a bit of a challenge to know which items you can actually interact with, but I personally didn’t have any issues tapping away at objects just to see if anything clicks. This felt entirely different from my experience with Your House, where figuring out what to do next was a chore in itself.
Here, the puzzles offer just the right amount of challenge without getting frustrating, and each chapter feels long enough that even the repetition never overstays its welcome. It doesn’t get tedious at all despite the pattern of the first few chapters, as these are all necessary for when the same scenes get subverted in the second act.
It’s an effective narrative tool to emphasise the impact of the turning point in the story, adding to the tension and the higher stakes, which definitely made me feel more and more invested in Dei’s tale despite me not knowing anything deeper about him apart from his photography.
What’s the appeal?
While I would normally fault a story for missing out on any proper character development to boost relatability, it surprisingly didn’t seem to matter that much to me here, probably because the presentation made the emotions feel like they were right there in my face.
It’s not necessarily a bad thing – it certainly distracted me from the fact that I knew nothing about this “mother” I’m chasing, nor did I feel Dei had any character arc from start to finish. It’s the closure he felt in the end (which I won’t spoil) that was the point of the narrative, and at just a little under two hours, that felt like it was the perfect runtime for the story it wanted to tell.
The soundtrack definitely plays a huge role here, dipping during the lows and rising to a crescendo during the highs.
There’s also the little details that add to the overall experience, so much so that when a character told me to take pictures of the scenery around me while I could, I found myself frantically snapping away my camera at everything I could point at, almost as if I was genuinely afraid that it would all slip away in the blink of an eye if I wasn’t fast enough.
I wanted so badly to capture every fleeting moment, and the way it’s designed reinforced that feeling within me.
When I snapped a picture of a cat lounging on top of a car, it slipped away as soon as I took the photo. The same was true for the flock of birds that I captured in the sky and the butterfly I found hovering around some flowers in the forest – they all went away after I clicked my camera, making me realise that if I hadn’t taken the photo at the precise time, the moment would have inevitably passed me by, just like that.
Herein lies the beauty of The Star Named EOS, as it doesn’t need overly complicated mechanics or convoluted plotlines and puzzles to drive its point home – life is short, take photos while you can, and just because something is gone doesn’t mean it’s lost forever.
The grief may always be there, but the memories and the love will always stay the same too – and that, for better or worse, should be more than enough.
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