Gloomy Eyes

Genre: Puzzle

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: Review code provided by the kind folks at Untold Tales)

Gloomy Eyes began its life as a half-hour VR game released in 2019. Now in 2025, this small experience has been expanded into a full game releasing on PC, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, and Nintendo Switch. This game takes place in a world where the sun has mysteriously gone missing, and the undead walk the Earth. While a human priest stirs up a war between humanity and the zombies, a young boy zombie named Gloomy befriends the priest’s curious daughter Nena, and the two set out to try to discover where the sun has gone, with both humanity and Gloomy’s zombie kin hunting them down on their journey.

The presentation in this game is simply wonderful, with one of the highlights being full game narration by Colin Farrel, who offers a warm empathy to the atmosphere. This is joined by light dreamlike music that lends the game the feel of a sort of dark fairy tale of sorts, which works quite well for the game.

Gloomy Eyes features an art style very reminiscent of the films of Henry Selick (the director of The Nightmare Before Christmas and Coraline), with characters that have exaggerated features, and level layouts that don’t match any sort of actual reality, with the land hollowed out and twisted into odd shapes and structures broken apart to the point where it seems unlikely they would still stand. It’s a striking look that suits the tone the game is aiming for, though I do think the stylized 3D visuals are let down a bit by the Nintendo Switch’s limited framerate and resolution, but overall the game still looks great, with some amazing use of lighting.

The gameplay itself is something I would put somewhere between Graphic Adventure and character-based Puzzle game, with players controlling Gloomy and Nena, swapping between them to help each other collect helpful items and use them to get past obstacles. Gloomy is strong, can hurl objects at targets, and isn’t hassled by other zombies, but isn’t very maneuverable and can be killed by bright lights. Meanwhile, Nena can’t interact with heavier objects and can get killed if she wanders too close to a zombie, but she can jump over small gaps and can interact with human machines in ways that Gloomy can’t.

One of the clever things this game does is the way light plays a role in the gameplay, since bright lights can kill Gloomy, but they keep Nena safe by keeping hostile zombies stunned. As such, there will be some areas that only one of the pair will be able to safely cross at any given time, and when puzzles involve moving bright lights around or turning on and off multiple lights at a time, you have to keep in mind the safety of both characters, as one can be harmed by the light and the other can potentially be harmed by its absence.

The way the game combines mechanics like this with its odd, twisted level design is both one of its greatest strengths and one of its biggest weaknesses. Much of the puzzle design here comes down to looking around the game’s diorama-like levels looking for things you can interact with and figuring out how to use them to reach new areas or grab previously-inaccessible items like keys. However, at the same time, the convoluted level design and the lack of indicators what objects you can interact with, as well as it being unclear where your characters can even walk, all make for some amount of confusion and frustration as you may on occasion find yourself wandering around the area you’ve already been able to access trying to figure out what you missed, or where exactly you’re supposed to go.

Still, despite the sometimes frustrating nature of its puzzles, Gloomy Eyes is an excellent Puzzle game with a beautifully-stylized world that’s well worth checking out. And as long as you have the patience to search for answers when you get stuck, I think Gloomy Eyes does a decent job making the search rewarding when you finally succeed.

tl;dr – Gloomy Eyes is a character-based Puzzle game where players swap between the small boy zombie Gloomy and the human girl Nena as they work together to try to solve the mystery of why the sun went missing. This game’s light and darkness puzzle mechanics and twisted level design are really creative, and while it can get frustrating to get stuck trying to figure out what to do or where to go, this game’s world is so enchanting it’s easy enough to overlook these issues for what is overall a charming and enjoyable game.

Grade: B

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