The Star Named EOS review — Motherly memories

Dei, a young photographer, begins on a journey to follow the path his mother once followed in an attempt to uncover her past. A photographer herself, Dei’s mother has been out of the picture for years, only sending the occasional letter and photo from her journeys without him. However, his resolve begins to waver the closer to the truth behind her absence, as the answers he seeks may not be simple.

Using a camera to take photos is one of the core gameplay mechanics, and will be one of your more important tools at your disposal. The main goal of The Star Named EOS is retracing your mother’s footsteps, and that means setting up photographs in the same way that she once did. This requires you to solve puzzles to unlock items you might need to get the framing right, such as finding a way to order a sandwich during a train ride, or locate just the right curtains to fit the image. Each level you progress through also has hidden stickers that when photographed will reveal small tidbits of lore. These were always fun to hunt around for, even if not integral to the overall experience.  

While there is photography in this game, most of the time you’ll be solving puzzles point-and-click style. Some of these are pretty standard, like opening a box by completing a sliding block puzzle, but some are a bit more involved, requiring you to be more perceptive. One puzzle near the start for example was a locked drawer with a spinning dial. Each of these dials had different symbols that could be selected, as well as a letter above each that spelled out NEWS. After using a compass to determine where north was, you can begin to deduce which symbols are required by finding them hidden throughout each cardinal direction. While I won’t give away the answer here in the review, puzzles like this one helped flesh out the game in more interesting ways.

It won’t take you long to get through everything The Star Named EOS has to offer, being able to reach the credits in only one or two play sessions. While narratively, it’s a story that doesn’t need much fleshing out, I did find myself wondering if the game could have benefited from a few more levels to provide my brain more puzzles to chew on. Either that, or provided a bit more challenge to the puzzles we did get, as while they did feel fun for the most part, I didn’t feel myself running into anything that stumped me for longer than a few minutes. Not that I believe this type of game should have featured extremely challenging scenarios, but I do think the knob could have used just a few clicks higher.

Most of the voice acting is solid, and the narrative writing is a surprising focus point  for a game like this. Sure it might be pretty tame as far as stakes are concerned, but the story of a young photographer following along his mother’s past journey was an intriguing concept, and one they executed decently well. That is ignoring the introduction of a seemingly random side character jammed in near the end of the game. This is just one symptom in the second half of the story that just didn’t feel as strong as the journey through the beginning, but I still enjoyed the short trip to fill up my album with memories.

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