The Star Named EOS Review (PS5) | Push Square

pushsquare.com:

Heartfelt, poignant stories are more common these days, thanks to more indie games than ever being released. Able to tell stories and make smaller experiences that larger games from big publishers won't touch, they can often be diamonds in the rough. For the most part, The Star Named EOS is one of those diamonds.

Across the three or so hour adventure you play as Dei, exploring a variety of memories following the footsteps of your mother through the photos she's taken and the locations she's visited. In these locations you're able to take your own photos of locations to capture memories. Additionally, you can find items in the environment to solve puzzles and interact with objects to uncover secrets.

Those puzzles form the bulk of the gameplay in The Star Named EOS, and are reminiscent of hidden object games. Almost all of them follow the template of having you find things in the environment, like a missing clock handle, to then change the time of the clock and move something in a cafe, for example. Or, you're finding codes in the environment out of numbers and symbols to open locked boxes or drawers.

For the most part these remain engaging throughout the brief adventure, despite being fairly repetitive in terms of structure. However, there are some unique ideas and brain teasers within this collection of puzzles. The latter half of the game especially offers some more interesting twists on the formula when the story starts moving forward, and it would've been nice to see more variety in the first half.

All those puzzles weave together to create a satisfying conclusion to Dei's journey that lands with impact, even if the pacing in the middle of the tale dips a little. Marrying the puzzles with the story is a gorgeous art style and stunning animation that consistently looks incredible, and has made the game stick in our mind. The Star Named EOS is a lovely, bitesized, personal tale that's easy to connect with and enjoy if you're a fan of similar narrative-led