Screenshots
Watch trailer on Steam ↗Éalú
Beyond the Bark · Published by Beyond the Bark
Very Positive — 93% positive (292 reviews) · 6 achievements
Last updated 7 Oct 2026
A cozy, handmade stop-motion adventure... unless the maze takes a darker turn... Guide your wooden mouse through a labyrinth full of puzzles & unknown dangers in search of an exit to a happier place.
£13.75
Lowest price we've ever recorded
View on SteamPrices can lag the live Steam store — always confirm before buying.
Price history
Adventure, Indie, Casual · 2025 · More £5 - £15 games
Guide your wooden mouse through Éalú’s intricate puzzles and unknown dangers, crafted by Beyond the Bark for an indie adventure that blends coziness with suspense.
About this game
Éalú is an award winning, 2 to 4 hour long, meditative experience, depending on how deeply you explore the maze, focused on physical craft and reflection - made by a small, independent team of artists. It's best defined as a highly interactive, silent film set to a gorgeous instrumental score.
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In a cozy, quiet nest at the heart of a stone-and-wood labyrinth, a clockwork mouse sleeps — and dreams of the outside world.
When it awakens, the only way forward is through. To escape, the mouse must rely on clever thinking, keen senses, and hope — despite past failures. The maze is filled with locked doors, cryptic puzzles, and lurking dangers. But maybe, this time, freedom is possible.
Rock Paper Shotgun's Edwin Evans-Thirwell wrote
"It's a lovely-looking thing - a 'true stop-motion game' "
PC Gamer's Ted Litchfield wrote, on previewing Éalú, that it's
"...Somewhat unsettling, like a cross between Myst and Wallace and Gromit—cozy, but also lonely, with flashes of something sinister here and there."
"...I think Beyond the Bark is cooking with a really special, singular atmosphere."
Heybox / 不羁猫探索队 scored Éalú 4/4 and remarked
"The strongest thematic unity of any indie I played this season… its handcrafted stop-motion quality simply cannot be replicated in 3D."
Éalú is a Point & Click Puzzle/Adventure Where You:
Guide a wooden, clockwork mouse from the maze’s center to its outer edges.
Solve environmental puzzles, uncover clues, and have dangerous encounters.
Eat cheese!
Discover the secrets of the maze — and the story hidden beneath it.
Background
Éalú is a spiritual sequel to "Tomcat Disposables" by Will Wood. If you're keen to know more, said short film can be seen by searching for Tomcat Disposables on YouTube, & gives backstory for our beloved mouse. The themes which inspired our game & its mechanics center on the confusing, sometimes destructive nature of algorithm driven behavioral loops, & the potential to be drawn in by or escape them.
An Artistic Experience Lovingly Made by a Tiny Team
As mentioned at the top, based on playtests we anticipate that, for most players, Éalú will be a focused 2 to 4 hour long experience. We put a lot of thought, time & care into our wordless story & it's themes which are expressed in tandem with phenomenal music, all with a goal of creating the ability to control a character in a gorgeous silent film.
Éalú is true, old-school stop-motion. Every animation was captured via photography frame-by-frame using real sets, hand-crafted props, and a physical wooden mouse. Over 512 video clips were painstakingly made by a single animator — mostly in a garden shed — and brought to life in Unity by one developer carefully ensuring that each movement flowed into the next.
All of the music was composed and recorded specifically for this artistic work by a single composer, and every illustration was drawn by hand.
Éalú was made with no budget & no crowdfunding. Just 4 people passionate about the project:
Ivan Owen of Beyond the Bark- Concept, design, animation & writing
Benjamin Orr- Design, Unity development & writing
Will Wood- Musical composition, performance & recording
JT Paton- Original illustrations & promotional art
We hope you enjoy experiencing Éalú as much as we loved making it.
Want to get in touch with us? Feel free to reach out to us at EaluGame@gmail.com
System Requirements
Will my PC run this? →Minimum
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: Intel Atom x5-Z8350 4-core ~1.44GHz
- Memory: 4 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750, 1GB
- Storage: 5.2 GB available space
Recommended
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS: Windows 10
- Processor: AMD Ryzen 3 3100 4-core (8 CPUs), ~3.6GHz
- Memory: 16 GB RAM
- Graphics: Radeon RX550, 2GB
- Storage: 5.2 GB available space
Supported Languages
*languages with full audio support
Latest news
AnnouncementsOfficial
Replica Éalú Mice Available
As with some of his past projects, our animator (Ivan) is making a limited series of replicas & other pieces of art available for sale. He's started with a series of 25 mice which are full scale, functional replicas of our game's mouse. So far mice # 1 through 8 have already sold. He'll be making them in batches of 5 until 25 are created and then will stop production.In the next couple of weeks, Ivan will also start creating carved wooden wall-art inspired by the game. Both the mice and the artwork will be available on Beyond the Bark's Website. *Update: The mice are now sold out, but you can keep an eye out for when the next batch is available. Also, for anyone who wants to try building their own mouse, we have free resources including template files available here.Read full article on Community Announcements (beyondthebarktheatre)Community & EventsOfficial
Éalú's now on Mac! We're celebrating with a fanart event.
We're excited about a huge milestone: Éalú is now available on Mac! Also, we just got featured in Make Magazine, which is an incredible honor. To celebrate, we're hosting our 2nd giveaway & discounting the game for the next week. Since Make magazine is all about creativity, and many mac users create art with their computers, we're centering this giveaway around creative process!For our 2nd giveaway, we're offering the actual heart puzzle that was used on the set of Éalú:The winner will receive the heart puzzle along with the 3 buttons the mouse used to interact with it in the game. We stress that this is NOT a replica: This will be the actual set pieces that Ivan built and that were used in the game itself. The giveaway will be a random drawing which players can enter by doing the following:Create a piece of fan art depicting the Éalú mouse! It can be hand-drawn, 3D rendered, crocheted, sculpted, lego, anything!Post your mouse picture to instagramTag @beyondthebarkpuppets & use the hashtag #ealumouse so that we can find your entryLast thing (optional) tag a streamer who you think would enjoy Éalú! We'd love for the mouse to be discovered by new people.Entries will close on August 17th at 10am PST / 6pm IST. We'll find the entries, randomly select a winner and announce the result on August 24th. Ivan & Ben will also select their 10 favorite mouse images and share them on Instagram and tag the artists (pending artist permission of course)Thank you for the ongoing, incredible response to this piece of art our team created & for supporting a project rooted in manual craft. We can't wait to see how people recreate the mouse!Read full article on Community Announcements (beyondthebarktheatre)AnnouncementsOfficial
Éalú Wins An Award!
Today at Ardán's FÍS '26 Games Summit the Irish Game Awards 2026 ceremony, helmed by Imirt (The Irish game making association), took place. Our team was absolutely thrilled to find out that Éalú received the prize for runner up in the category of Best Experimental Game in a field of beautiful & well crafted games created by people in Ireland!As Éalú was the debut game for everyone on our team, we feel incredibly honored and fortunate to have received this award. The day at the event was absolutely lovely, including the opportunity for us to demo our game for event participants, have great conversations with other game creators & experience first hand the amazing games built by other teams.As our team is spread very far apart geographically... here is a photo of our animator & conceptual designer, Ivan, receiving the award on behalf of the team and then walking awkwardly back to his seat as he didn't quite know what to do with himself:A deep and sincere thank you to all those who saw what we were doing early on and encouraged us to keep pursuing this idea!- The Ealu TeamRead full article on Community Announcements (beyondthebarktheatre)AnnouncementsOfficial
[Spoiler Warning] Visit A Location Where Éalú Was Made
On a dry morning in early May of 2025 our animator, Ivan, woke up before sunrise to capture a timelapse sequence for the end of our game. It rains regularly in the spring in the SouthWest of Ireland, so he had been waiting for just the right conditions. He packed up 3 mice & his camera gear and drove out to Lough Gur in Limerick County.The morning was perfect: no rain, a lovely mist resting on the surface of the lake and the sound of birds greeting the early light. As Ivan approached the corner of a stone wall to set up, to his great surprise a tiny mouse appeared from a crack in the wall squeaked in alarm and then darted into a different crack. It seemed like a sign that the corner of the wall was the right place to set the 3 wooden mice for the moment in Éalú where the mouse finds freedom, community and the natural world.If you enjoyed our game, happen to be in Ireland or visiting and want to re-trace the mouse's wheel tracks, Lough Gur is an amazing location. Humans have inhabited the area surrounding Lough Gur for roughly 5,000 years and the site features stunning views and walks including a trail that goes through the site of a neolithic settlement. There's also a visitor's center with a wealth of information on the history of the area. Check out their website here: Lough Gur Visitor Centre & Lakeshore ParkThe stone wall corner seen above is at the edge of a lovely picnic area:If you do find your way to the site of the end of Éalú, feel free to tag @beyondthebarkpuppets on Instagram and let us know! We hope that this might help new people to experience this wonderful place.Read full article on Community Announcements (beyondthebarktheatre)Patch NotesOfficial
Hotfix 3: Screen Scaling Issue Resolved
Good evening! We have resolved a longstanding issue with our game not properly scaling at irregular monitor aspect ratios, and on the Steamdeck. Buttons and composited sprites should appear exactly where they should be regardless of your screen size. We appreciate your patience with this issue. Kind regards, -The Éalú TeamRead full article on Community Announcements (Achilles)
