Gloomy Eyes gets a second look as interactive adventure

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Announcements by Jack Allin
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Game adaptation of 2020 VR animated film to be released for Windows PC in 2025

In 2020, a VR animated film called Gloomy Eyes was released, telling an unlikely love story between a living girl and an undead boy in a world where zombies are illegal. Sounds like great source material for an adventure game! Fortunately, publisher ARTE France thinks so too, and gamers can now look forward to an interactive version called Gloomy Eyes – The Game to be launched in 2025.

The trouble all started when the sun grew tired of humans and decided never to rise again, casting the planet in a state of perpetual darkness. This resulted in a most unexpected consequence, as the dead began rising from the graves, only to be chased off and hunted down by the living. Ten years later, when the mere existence of zombies is against the law, forcing them to hide in the forest, an unusual zombie child named Gloomy, who doesn't feel particularly comfortable around his own kind, falls in love with a human girl named Nena. This forbidden romance is complicated further by the fact that Nena's uncle is the leader of the zombie hunters. Against this backdrop of "fear, tension, and hostility" between the two populations, Gloomy and Nena set out on a quest to find the sun and "bring warmth back in these forsaken lands."

Described as a "dark but poetic narrative puzzle game," Gloomy Eyes is presented via the same stylishly crafted dioramas as its award-winning VR counterpart, detailing a "miniature, charmingly eerie, spinning world." There's a poignant story to uncover, exploring themes of "being different, belonging, and the awkwardness and improbability of finding love," but since the whole point of this adaptation by Belgian developer Fishing Cactus is to make it interactive, there will be plenty of gameplay involved too. Most notably, players will alternate control between the two protagonists, who must work together using their unique talents if they're to succeed in making the sun rise on the world once again.

Gloomy Eyes – The Game is still a fair way off, with a target completion date expected sometime in 2025 for Windows PC. In the meantime, those with the required VR hardware can find the original film on Steam, presented in 6DoF and 3D real-time across three episodes.