If you’ve been frequenting Twitter during July 2025, it’s been damn near impossible to avoid seeing the AI-generated ‘pixel’ GIF and the people wanting a game in the same style. The problem is, those games already exist and are wildly underappreciated. Eclipsium is one of these games. 

Eclipsium is a strange game by Housefire Games with elements of adventure, puzzles, and horror that blend to form something unfathomably creepy, stylistically stunning, and altogether incredibly fun to play. There’s a demo available to try right now, and it’s a bizarre experience that you should try. 

Where am I?

This is a question that you will ask many times during a playthrough of the Eclipsium demo. There isn’t much story offered, although the Steam page gives some hints as to what the full game will entail. In the demo, you’re thrust into what appears to be a hospital room, only to leave and find yourself in the middle of a forest. Then, after walking through the forest, you come across a Mine to explore. 

All of these places seem disjointed and random, but one would assume that everything is connected. Without the story behind what’s going on, it’s impossible to tell. Still, the areas themselves are fun to explore and packed with details that will keep appearing to you regardless of how many times you’ve been in the same location. 

There are puzzles to complete, too. While you’re in the Mines, you’ll come across some strange tentacles and you’re always being watched by the squelchy, blinking eyeballs in the walls. Neither the tentacles or eyeballs like the light, though, and you can use fire to your advantage to progress through the labyrinthine tunnels.

Style and art

There are various items to interact with in each location, and you’ll know when you can use something because your right hand will reach out as you approach. If something can be picked up, your left hand will appear. Once you’ve picked something up and used it, you don’t get to use it again. Everything designed for the left hand serves a single-use purpose. 

Admittedly, the art style of Eclipsium is not as smooth as those AI-generated images doing the rounds on Twitter, but those images have no heart or personality. Eclipsium seems to be a 3D game with a filter applied on top, but you can see the amount of work and effort that has gone into developing every scene. 

AI is capable of producing a GIF that lasts for a few frames; it takes a human mind and their imagination to come up with a story and apply that to a game that’s capable of sucking you in. The human touch is, and will remain, the most important aspect of video games, regardless of what a computer can churn out without thought. 

Eclipsium does not have a release date for the full game just yet, but there is a demo to tickle the taste buds in the meantime. While you’re on the Steam page, wishlist and follow to get updates as development moves along.

Eclipsium

Developer:
Housefire

Publisher:
Critical Reflex

Release date:
September 19, 2025

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