Eclipsium Review
Eclipsium is a surreal, dreamlike journey that feels deeply personal.
Eclipsium. Credit: Housefire / Critical Reflex
Critical Reflex is on a roll. Only four days after the release of the excellent No, I'm Not a Human, they published another winner—Eclipsium, a short, surreal horror walking simulator from developer Housefire. Hot on the heels of that, they'll be releasing Carimara: Beneath the forlorn limbs, but that's a topic for an upcoming review. Right now, let's talk about Eclipsium.
In the game, you play the Wanderer, searching for “Her,” through increasingly nightmarish locations. The story unfolds without dialogue through brief cutscenes and environmental storytelling. It's a meditation on grief, guilt, transformation, and the lengths one'll go to reach someone they've lost.
Eclipsium. Credit: Housefire / Critical Reflex
The game takes you through some genuinely striking locations as the Wanderer descends into his own hell. The Depths send you underground through abandoned mining equipment. The Village is a paranoid hamlet that sacrificed a supposed witch. Then there's my favorite: the Church of Slaughter, a nightmarish industrial abattoir presented as a cathedral with an endless stream of pigs on rails feeding a cosmic horror. These aren't just atmospheric setups; they're metaphors that build on each other as the story progresses. One of the later areas in the game, a kaleidoscopic cathedral, was especially inventive.
The tale of love and sacrifice carries influences from many sources, in its narrative, themes, and visuals. You can see Studio Ghibli in the serene Painted World sections and Guillermo del Toro in the body horror transformations. And there’s more: the works of Satoshi Kon, the self-portraits of Finnish painter Helene Schjerfbeck, anime like Neon Genesis Evangelion. The game remixes these into something cohesive rather than derivative.
Eclipsium. Credit: Housefire / Critical Reflex
Gameplay consists of exploration with light puzzle solving. You transform your hand into different tools—a blade to cut, a hole to see hidden things, flame to light the way. These transformations tie into the story, and each represents something the Wanderer very literally sacrifices in the game.
Eclipsium is one of the most visually striking games I’ve played recently. The low-fi 3D graphics somehow felt far more realistic than they should have, thanks to the combination of several factors. The player’s hand, always visible on the screen, was physically recorded from a live model, including sculpted objects when the player needs to hold something. The hand, in combination with a limited color palette and heavy dithering, gives the impression that you’re watching heavily filtered, low-resolution video rather than real-time 3D graphics, making the experience all the more surreal. It’s impressive. I was enchanted the whole way through.
Eclipsium. Credit: Housefire / Critical Reflex
The game stumbles near the end with a series of puzzles that have you falling through looping environments to land on platforms and cut chains. There are several of these back to back, each design more complicated than the last, and the physics make them harder than they should be. The game’s rudimentary movement works fine for a walking simulator, but when the game requires precise platforming, the controls fall short.
I finished Eclipsium in one sitting, about four hours. It's the kind of horror game that understands the genre isn't just about scaring you; it can also be about self-reflection and confronting uncomfortable truths. The Wanderer's journey isn't really about saving the Princess. It’s about reckoning with what you've become in that pursuit. Seemingly noble goals can stem from a place of self-interest and come with prices that are too high. The game, however, seems deeply personal, and my reading might not be the one the developers intended.
Eclipsium is available now on Steam.
Overall Score: 8/10
Played on: Steam Deck
