Review — Gloomy Eyes

We sit down and review Gloomy Eyes. A twisted adventure-puzzle game, with some Burton whimsy. Here is our review of half of Gloomy Eyes

It certainly took a little bit of extra time, but we finally saw Gloomy Eyes land on the consoles and flat screen formats, along with an upcoming physical edition of the game this Halloween. A nice little puzzle platforming game that Fishing Cactus and Untold Tales has for us on the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC. All to give us some new and creepy fun with a bit of that Tim Burton feel to the world out there. Just having a look at the basics for Gloomy Eyes can show you all of that. What it cannot show you, though, is whether it is going to be worth your time and money to play. That is where we are stepping in to give you our full review and gameplay experience for the game. Let us see if it is living up to it all, or a shambling horror that you might need to run away from.

Story

The world out there is in a bit of a dark place, where the sun is gone and all the blame is on the zombies that are unliving their lives out there. Those still with a pulse, after blaming the undead, have figured that if they could get rid of them all, maybe the sun would come back. The main one is the leader of the cult, Nena’s uncle, who has proclaimed himself to be the “Priest.” Having some compassion for the undead, Nena sets off to find another way and runs into one of the first undead, Gloomy. Gloomy being a zombie with glowing eyes and a passion to keep Nena alive. From there, the duo sets out to find where the sun has been hiding and bring the light back to the world. Even if that does seem like it would end Gloomy’s life, as he cannot tolerate light at all…

Hated

For those who might not know, Gloomy Eyes is a self-coop title where we will be playing as both characters along the way. Gloomy brings the mindless strength, and Nena offers up some of the brilliance and intelligence out there. Not a terrible thing, until you get slapped with this fact a few chapters in, and seemingly out of nowhere. I mention this, as the game primed me to think I will always need to pick things up and place them as needed, and can use any character I want. The first few chapters have both characters rolling solo, so it is needed. That is why it is such a harsh turn after all of that when both characters become the most basic versions, where Gloomy cannot place things, and Nena cannot even toss the back of items. If this were established from the start of Gloomy Eyes, it would not have been much of an issue, but when Gloomy can solve some of the puzzles and Nena can toss wooden planks around for the first few chapters, it becomes confusing when the character swapping mechanism is brought in. Effectively, forcing us to unlearn what we just did in the tutorial missions. Annoying, for sure, but not game-breaking.

Speaking on the character swapping mechanic in Gloomy Eyes, it feels like something that was slightly underrepresented in the game until way later. Since Gloomy cannot be in bright light and the other zombies want to eat Nena, they have to play to their other strengths in the game. Not a terrible bit of gameplay as it works in other games, but here, there is little leading up to it and explanation until it is too late. Not a terrible thing, but when Gloomy runs into the first bright light or Nena runs into the first black ring around a zombie, we then have to wait for a long time for everything to reset. Sometimes this happens just because the game thinks you are fully in the danger zone when you might have just looked in its direction. The harder part comes as this can happen after scenes play out in Gloomy Eyes and the whole game reloads to have you try again. Sometimes, this means full cutscenes play out, and you have to watch the world pan around a bit before you can try again. Yes, you can skip these at times, but it is rather annoying when one slight misstep can take so much time to play out once again.

Which will bring me to my last bit for Gloomy Eyes that rather rubbed me the wrong way. That is the camera system that we are introduced to, but then pretty much never tasked with using again. Well, unless you accidentally hit the wrong button and it opens up. This is a system that lets you look around the map in a full 360 view, kind of. It lets you rotate the map with the idea that you will be able to see hidden items or find missing paths along the way in the game. A nice thought, and maybe a link back to the VR roots out there, but in practice, not needed outside of the tutorial. In fact, I think I never used it again in my play of Gloomy Eyes as it did not fully allow for the view of the maps as needed, as it would randomly zoom in as the map spun, and there was no way I could find to zoom back out. Most of the time, this hid more of the map and did not let me look around as freely as I wished I could. Not that it was hard to find the paths, but if you wanted to find the collectibles, it was pretty much needed. If it worked, that is.

Loved

So, to kick off things here for the things that I loved for Gloomy Eyes, we are going to have to dig into the story and the world that we are given. Even if the whole bringing the sun back into the sky does seem a bit off when one character cannot handle any light is a bit weird, it does all truly play out like a story from where the inspiration came from. The look, feel, and dark humor that is blended in, all while the Gravedigger offers up the tidbits along the way. Almost as if we are playing a living storybook instead of a traditional video game narrative. Including other little tidbits added in for Gloomy Eyes if you do find the various collectibles around the maps as well. A nice little touch that had me engrossed in the game, and pressing on when I did come across some of the above issues I had. Even if the story did not make total sense in the end, it is all about the presentation and how it was all involved that nails down the first big love to the game out there. It did truly feel like playing a video game that was directed by Tim Burton, even though it was not.

Moving along from there, once the core gameplay of Gloomy Eyes does kick off, that is where the fun puzzle designs are allowed to shine. Some only need one character or both to complete, but all in a way that feels like it makes sense. I mention this, as they are tricky, but once you figure it all out, you are left feeling accomplished and not like you should have figured it out before then. A balancing act that many other puzzle games do not get right. That is the point of them, to feel like you solved it and not that you were dumb for not solving it. That, or finding out that some of the puzzles in Gloomy Eyes have various ways that we can go about solving them, so one path is not always the correct one. I will not name any specifically, so you can figure them out on your own, but know that there are some in there that do not always require brute force, but can still be solved in that way. Also, to the contrary, others can be solved with some fun thinking and following different paths along the way. A true sign that the team took the time to make sure this aspect of the game worked.

Wrapping all of this up to the final bit I enjoyed in Gloomy Eyes, and wish there was more of it. Gloomy is set as the designated muscle of the duo, as well as has some kinds of feelings for Nena along the way. At a few points in the game, she is truly threatened, and Gloomy has to step up to make sure she is protected. That is where some of the core for Gloomy Eyes gets shifted up into a bit of a brawler game that adds a lot more fun into the mix. These are only held for boss fights or big show pieces in the game, so it happens only a few times, but it is a whole lot of fun, since it adds more of the puzzle elements in, along with some of the various combat too. I understand why they did not want to have it in the full game, but given how much fun it is, I would have liked to have a bit more. Even if it might have ruined some of the danger by just having Gloomy fight all of the other zombies in the mix. Yes, it is a mixed bag, but when they came along, these parts of the game had me fully invested in it all. Truly a solid addition to the mix of it all.

Overview

All of that said, is Gloomy Eyes a solid game for you to spend time with and enjoy another story from? The gripes I did have for the game are rather trivial and easy to overlook once the bulk of the game kicks off. If you go in knowing certain things will need to be forgotten, then it is not a huge issue. I will have to warn, though, that it is a short game. It only took a few hours to make it through the whole story and find a few collectibles along the way. So, I would say it is worth the time, but it might be worth waiting for the cost to drop from the full game price it might still have at the time you are reading this. If Gloomy Eyes had a few more chapters or more of the combat levels added in, it easily would have been a buy now, but that is still not the case. So, wait until the physical edition goes live and buy it digitally, or pick it up in physical form a little further down the line. A solid game, just not a premium-priced title out there. Which is sad to say.

I give Gloomy Eyes 9 Mementos on the Memento scale.

Gloomy Eyes — Hades Plays The Full Game [PS5 Gameplay]

 

Gloomy Eyes was developed by Fishing Cactus and published by Untold Tales for the PS5, Xbox Series X|S, Switch, and PC on September 12^th, 2025. A PlayStation copy of the game was provided by the publisher for reviewing purposes.