Not each autumn fright experience has to terrify gamers. Including beloved classics such as animated detectives to delightful stories such as Over the Garden Wall, numerous spooky-season staples offer entertainment without requiring increasing anxiety. There’s also, a expanding collection of spooky-cute titles featuring Halloween vibes, but not the sleep-with-the-lights-on intensity of fear. Gloomy Eyes arrived in recent months, and stands as an superb relaxing option to the deeply scary games of this year.
A Unique Single-Player Cooperative Adventure
Labeled as a solo collaboration puzzle game, Gloomy Eyes unites a living-impaired child named Gloomy and a human girl named Nena as they begin an quest to return daylight to their dark, dark environment. Their appearance evokes collectible figures blended with the figures from a stop-motion animation. Their light-complected and baggy-eyed appearance is influenced by the appearance of Gothic fantasy movies, and the story is a archetypal suitable for everyone journey. These two develops an enduring connection over the duration of the game’s multiple stages as Nena strives to demonstrate to her religious guardian that, hey, possibly the undead are actually good.
Original Gameplay Systems
This unique label stems from the game’s world-based challenges. After Gloomy and Nena encounter each other, you’ll swap among the budding companions to complete challenges and move forward through the levels. Being a zombie, Gloomy can’t walk through the brightness of a light source, while Nena will get snatched up by wandering undead except if a light is shone on them.
They must cooperate closely — well, players control them simultaneously — to complete stages. Nena may move or briefly disable illumination to create passages for Gloomy, while the thoughtful youth will employ his undead power to rearrange obstacles in the environment, revealing ways for Nena.
Engaging Level Design
The brain-teasers bring to mind a touch of The Gardens Between, in the way the areas are floating, model-like structures that the view rotates in coordination with your characters. Gloomy Eyes’ environments are quite fun, leading the friends around a fair and through a ghostly building, among other locales. There’s a “diorama view” feature that permits you to zoom out and rotate the areas, both to enjoy the designs and hunt for routes that may not have been clear.
Slight Challenges and Overall Gameplay
Here lies one of the few problems with Gloomy Eyes. Similar to other releases with a fixed perspective, it’s not always clear where the characters are able to move. Gamers could require to simply collide with a multiple different objects to figure out which ones are interactable, as it’s not always intuitive.
However, those small obstacles don't hinder of a spooky-cute fun adventure. Gloomy Eyes runs on the short side, with approximately a few sessions worth of brain-teasers. Advanced areas blend together subtle stealth and dynamic sequences with the problem-solving, as Gloomy Eyes marches toward a rewarding — and moderately unforeseen — ending.
Availability and Summary
Players shying away from the scares of intense horror titles should definitely try Gloomy Eyes. The game is out on Switch console, PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Microsoft console, and is presently discounted for a quarter off on online stores.
The spooky-cute adventure is out now on various systems and provides a pleasurable choice for players in search of autumn enjoyment without the intense scares.