At a time where the rise of AI-generated imagery is seeing web destinations and social media platforms crowded with low-effort, high environmental-cost “content,” it feels more important than ever to recognise the parts of genuine artistry that even the most powerful large language models can’t replicate – the human holding the pen, the brush, the camera. The moments and people that inspire. The legacy that art and artists leave behind.
Playing The Star Named EOS, the latest story-rich puzzle adventure from Behind The Frame’s Silver Lining Studio, not only reminded me of the inherent magic of photography and the way that a photo allows us to capture and preserve a moment in time, but the importance of the hands and eyes guiding that lens, choosing that moment and putting in-frame only the exact piece of our world that we wish to pass along.
Through this story of Dei, a shutterbug following his mother’s photographic journey via a series of letters and polaroids chronicling her time across a number of picturesque-looking locations, the game manages to say a lot with comfortingly little – something about pictures and four-digit word counts, you know? I don’t want to delve too much into the story here as it unfolds quite wonderfully in the game’s brisk, two-hour runtime and I’d hate to ruin any of it. Suffice it to say that there’s more than first meets the eye and the closing scenes elicit a ton of emotions.
In simplest terms, The Star Named EOS sticks closely to the path laid out by the studio’s previous work gameplay-wise, placing players in a number of different beautifully-drawn scenes in which they’ll need to prod, poke and puzzle their way through to a conclusion. In this case, the goal in most scenes is to recreate a photo left to Dei by his mother, revisiting the same scenes and collecting the right objects to frame it just the same. Puzzles are very point-and-click in nature – you’ll need to find objects and clues in your surroundings to open locked containers, complete mechanisms or figure out important details. There’s nothing hugely taxing on the ol’ grey matte here, but it’s all pretty satisfying to solve.
The real highlight is being able to pore over each of the environments, which are all hand-drawn scenes but presented in a panoramic, first-person viewpoint that works to startling effect. It’s particularly impressive whenever you whip your camera out and watch these technically-2D elements go in and out of focus. Some parts of the game are also accompanied by fully-animated sequences complete with voice acting and some slick production values.
Like its previous games, it’s the way in which Silver Lining Studio manages to marry gameplay, visuals and storytelling to bring its core messages to life. Here, it’s those same things I articulated upfront. The Star Named EOS explores how we’re able to filter the world around us through our own lens, and in each photo pass on the things that are important to us and those we share them with – good or bad. It’s not a photography sim by any stretch, but the way the game makes us active participants in inheriting and understanding these moments is extraordinary.
To highlight the tiny but distracting marks on this particular image, I can imagine that some players will be disappointed to find there’s almost nothing in the way of a hint system for the game’s puzzles (at one point I observed an object being highlighted on-screen when I idled for a little too long, but that’ll be small comfort for anyone stuck on deciphering obscure codes opening puzzles boxes). There’s also, curiously, no option to invert the camera when using a controller, which made my time with the game on PS5 initially jarring and disorienting.
It’s worth forgiving any minor flaws though, as the full picture is a true work of art.