Eyes That Hypnotise Review

Why do you guys have to be so cute!

Ever since Cats Organized Neatly released, similar games have been released as well, except with different animals (or objects if you also count the inventory organization themed puzzle games). Though, I haven’t picked up the animal themed ones since. I guess it just satisfied the itch for these type of puzzle games. Plus, I have to be in the mood for puzzle games and the demos for these specific type of puzzle games satisfied the itch enough. I haven’t even picked up the other Organized Neatly games. Well, that was before I saw Eyes That Hypnotise come across my screen. It was those eyes man. The eyes drew me in and I just had to play it.

For Eyes That Hypnotise, the title isn’t as self explanatory when you look at the title. This is a puzzle game where you’re basically organizing the various animals into the gridded space that’s provided. You must use every animal and can’t have any space empty. There are 60 levels here, which are separated into 5 chapters, where each one will give you a handful of animals and a gridded area. Each animal represents various shapes that block(s) can make when put together. All you have to do is just figure out how they all fit together in together by rotating them, placing them, seeing if the other animals fit, and maybe taking them out when it’s not quite right yet. Talking about animals, each chapter has 6 new animals be added to the rooster. Aside from the first chapter, every other level adds in a new animal (which most of the time is a new shape) that also goes with the theme of that chapter.

Difficulty-wise, I felt that Eyes That Hypnotise does well to not being too easy but also not too hard. Of course, the game does start pretty easy since you don’t have that many animals to work with, but it does get a bit more difficult and stays, with some few levels here and there being tricky. However, Eyes That Hypnotise does have something else that differentiates this from all the other similar games apart from the visuals. This game has a hint system. Oh my gosh, this was a godsend. Sometimes you just need help with placing one piece and you’re set. Or maybe you didn’t know if you placed one animal in the wrong spot. The hint system here will only highlight one thing whenever you press it and it depends on what the situation is on the solving grid space. If there’s nothing placed yet or the animals places already are correct, it’ll highlight an animal and the correct placement of it on the grid. If there is an animal incorrectly placed, it’ll highlight that piece. Though, you might still have multiple incorrectly placed animals. You can press the hint button as many times as you want here, it just has a quick cooldown.

The music here is nice and does help set the relaxing vibe. Each chapter even aims to have tracks that fit the chapter’s theme. Like tracks that give you a city vibe in the city chapter. However, the real highlight here is the art. The backgrounds themselves are pretty minimal, with the play area having this cardboard vibe to how it’s textured and the decorations used around the grid being within the chapter’s theme. The animals themselves, though, are the stars. They have that white outline that gives them an impression that they were cut from paper and each animal are so cute. The art style gives them a dash of roughness and a sprinkle of realism on top of the cuteness that a simpler style would bring. Not to mention their eyes, which follow your mouse and then dilate when they first spawn in and whenever you click them. Then they get all adorable when you complete the level as their eyes dilate and sparkle. In addition, each animal has a couple noises that they’ll do when being picked up/set down and they all have a little animation that plays. And I’m not talking about their eyes moving or the whole piece wiggling. If you’re looking at an animal at the right time, you’ll notice them breathing, moving their tail, moving their legs, or moving whatever else.

In addition, Eyes That Hypnotise also has all their animals have personalities. They all have names and little blurbs to go along with them that describes their personality and even why they might be in the position that they’re in. This pops up when you first unlock them, but you can view them again when going to the Animal Collection. Which also lets you see all of their cute chibi artwork for them all in one place. After finishing the whole game and unlocking all the animals, I have a hard time choosing which one was my favorite.

Verdict

I liked Eyes That Hypnotise. It’s a good simple puzzle game where you try to fit various animals with big, cute eyes in the gridded space provided. The visuals and the dilating eyes in particular carries this game for me and I’m glad it caught my attention as this was a nice little game. Not to mention that I very much appreciate that a hint system was implemented. Whether you wanted another puzzle game in the same vein as Cats Organized Neatly or this would be the first game in this puzzle type that you’ll be playing, Eyes That Hypnotise is worth picking up. Just look at those eyes and tell me it isn’t.