Explore a puppetmaker’s fear of “dark or fruitless” digital conditioning in Éalú, a deceptively cute stop-motion maze game

Today sees the release of Éalú, a point-and-click puzzler about a wooden mouse exploring a maze. It’s a lovely-looking thing – a “true stop-motion game”, as the Steam page puts it, with every frame of animation based on photography of physical props and sets. After watching the trailer, it’s no huge surprise to learn that designer, animator and writer Ivan Fisher-Owen has a wider background in puppet-making and gadgetry. He and his partner Dr Emma Fisher-Owen run Beyond the Bark, an inclusive theatrical fabrication company based in Limerick, Ireland (“éalú” is an Irish word for “escape”).

Backstage know-how aside, Éalú draws upon Ivan Fisher-Owen’s misgivings about the brain-souring effects of being terminally online, with some interesting metaphors for everyday hellsite routines I will try my best not to baldly unpack. I listed Éalú in this week’s Maw round-up, and Fisher-Owen got in touch with me afterward to share code and chat briefly about the project’s guiding anxieties.

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  Here’s a game where you have to end parallel worlds that only takes 10 minutes to beat for “busy working adults”