As much as I’d like to change my words up and offer up a string of persuasive sentences that make you moist, I’ll just rely on some basic vocabulary and get to the point: Gloomy Eyes, published by Untold Tales, is stunning. A Tim Burton-esque comparison is fair, but don’t let that lead you down the path of it being unoriginal.
The Gloomy of the title is a zombie boy with the Sun in his eyes. After an unfortunate turn of events, he’s buried before his time, only to be resurrected in a world of eternal darkness. The humans, a bit miffed that the Sun has gone in and the land is plagued by the walking dead, and not a single actor from Love Actually is present, are intent on capturing and/or killing them. Again.
Because of this, Gloomy has to stumble his way through a series of dioramas, solving puzzles accordingly. As the undead, he’s a bit of a sun dodger, so without the Sun, lightbulbs take their place and will render him pretty damn useless. As he’s already dead, he’ll just have to restart from the last checkpoint, so whenever you see a lightbulb, look for something to throw at it.
A similar restriction exists for Nena – a doe-eyed Christina Ricci type that has heard about the boy with the Sun in his eyes and wants to meet him. While Gloomy is traversing zombie-hunting humans and avoiding the light, Nena is abusing her curfew and escaping the reach of her crazed uncle, The Priest, who has it in for ol’ Glooms. Nena can comfortably navigate the rays from tungsten, but she’s not too good at being manhandled by zombies and will also face respawn fate.
Luckily, the two meet up over the 10 or so chapters of Gloomy Eyes, and paired up together, solve problems based on each other’s limitations. For example, Gloomy will walk straight past the undead without breaking a sweat, and Nena will be able to stroll past the streetlights and effectively turn them off for Gloomy to get through, or redirect the light so it shines in the cold, dead eyes of the zombies, rendering their grabbiness redundant.
Gloomy Eyes is effectively a co-op for lonely people, as it’s a one-player game, which means you’ll only fall out with yourself and have yourself to blame if you can’t work out what to do next. After a handful of chapters, the two pair up with one starting in one area, the other in the next. Pressing triangle will switch between the two on the fly, and objects can be handed to one another while stationary. It works out really well, and despite the seemingly small areas to explore, it’s a fair challenge.
Gloomy Eyes was originally a VR game, and that seems apparent when you consider the scenes; however, it’s very different from the first game and completely standalone. Pressing the PlayStation pad, or whatever it’s called, will trigger a flyover view of the area so you can see where you need to get to, though it didn’t work at all for me. I have three DualSenses and two connected to the PS5, but I still couldn’t get it to work. Moving the analogue sticks about does help, plus the game employs that now universal yellow paint splatter to indicate a point of interest/area to interact with.
I switched up my experience of the game by playing on a 4K screen and through my tablet via Remote Play. The former is definitely a highlight, as this game is absolutely beautiful to look at, like The Midnight Walk, both in presentation and expert storytelling. You could spend an age taking screenshots to share on social media or your gaming website to showcase what a delight it is. That said, playing on a dinky screen was really intimate and imitates the feeling that this is a really cosy, wholesome tale made for one, even as a co-op. Definitely recommended.
