Eidolon: Introductory Guide and Survival Manual

v. 2.1 - Feb. 2024,
replacing
v 1.21 - Jan. 2015

About this guide

Updated/Revised - February 2024.
In 2015, after my first playthrough of Eidolon, I published to Steam an "Introductory Guide and Survival Manual." I'm gratified that a fair number of gamers seem to have found it useful!

In December 2023 and January 2024, I figured that enough time had passed since then to give Eidolon another exploration. I enjoyed it even more the second time around, truth be told.

I've now revised the guide — some material has been removed, some added, and the rest reworked. You'll find a bit of history and abstract discussion about Eidolon, as well as an overview of core concepts and mechanics.

While there's nothing too spoiler-y here apart from some material in the FAQ at the end, it bears keeping in mind that the inevitably unfolding mystery of Eidolon is part of its appeal, as well as the intent of its creators.

So: read the details at your own risk! Many say the game is best enjoyed "blind."

About the Game

Birthed in 2014, Eidolon is the inaugural release from Seattle's Ice Water Games — an indie studio which, at present writing ten years later, now has a number of further titles on its shelf.

Eidolon is primarily the brainchild of Kevin Maxon, Ice Water's founder, with a lovely ambient score and sound design by Michael Bell. It has been variously described in the press as a "walking simulator" and an "interactive painting." Maxon, then a college student and young developer with no experience in the industry, has said that Eidolon concerns itself with two main themes: (a) in the human experience, the contrast between that which is permanent and that which is ephermal; and (b) in game design, the dichotomy any project necessarily exhibits between system and story.

In terms of gameplay, Eidolon is an open-world survival and exploration experience — yet it is largely atypical of this genre in many ways. The survival mechanics are rudimentary, rather mild, almost incidental. There is only the merest hint of crafting involved, with no basing or building. The expansive game world is not procedurally generated. It is handcrafted in an ultra-low-poly graphics style — very "PS1" — which, for all its gritty minimalism, shows surprising charm and profound beauty at times.

Some have superficially compared Eidolon to Proteus (Twisted Tree, 2013). But it's a unique beast of a game. Those who like Eidolon tend to really love it, while those who don't will find it intractably odd or even immediately repulsive — there doesn't seem to be much middle ground.

Some say the intensely pared-down, stylized graphics are endearing, while others find them hard on the eyes. By any standard, the game is markedly underdeveloped in some ways — clippy, buggy, rough around the edges, a little miscalculated and ill-proportioned, almost as if unfinished. And yet it wouldn't be itself without those very quirks: any attempt to polish the rough places, or to flesh out the more half-baked aspects of play, would pretty well amount to vandalism.

The game's title is a Greek word meaning, roughly, an idealized image or archetype. The title bears no relation to Warframe, nor is it in reference to the 1980s video game by Lucasfilm, The Eidolon. Instead, it is taken from a poem called "Eidólons" in Whitman's Leaves of Grass; some verses are quoted during the game. It's worth reading Whitman's original[whitmanarchive.org] before playing — the poem does contain some clues about what you can expect, even if only in metaphorical mode.

When play begins, the player character is unceremoniously deposited into the wilds of a future Pacific Northwest, apparently abandoned. If you've read the marketing materials, you'll know that the year is circa 2400 AD and that society has been gorked — that's about it, that's all you get. Soon you'll notice that your character needs to eat, to sleep, and to avoid injury. It begins to look as though you're the only sentient organism around. This place was clearly reclaimed by nature some time ago. There are these flashing crystals dotting the landscape here and there. You're supposed to collect them, it seems.

Eidolon deliciously circumvents the usual adventure paradigm in one key respect. It's a game with a backstory, but the backstory doesn't merely inform the gameplay, it drives it. Uncovering this rich, multifaceted, interconnected narrative is the entire point of the experience, to the extent that it could be said to have one at all. It's an open world whose enshrouded backstory is the whole shebang.

The player painstakingly traverses the post-apocalyptic environs of Seattle in search of clues about what the hell has happened here. This is achieved through the collection of fragmentary lore ranging from photographs and hand-drawn maps to emails, zine articles, artwork, poems, and journal entries.

It's the thoughtfulness of detail and the overarching artistry that went into all of this memorabilia which give Eidolon its own characteristic soul — combined with the uber-chill, meditative feel of the game world. Again, some love it, some hate it. De gustibus non est disputandum.

Personally, my conflicted feelings are these: I wish Maxon and his team could've gone to a little more trouble to fill out their product, to lavish on it just a bit more tender, loving care. That being said, the game is a meteoric little work of art from a specific time and place, and because it captures that spirit so perfectly, it'd be hard to justify changing a single thing.

Controls

The controls are intuitive, about what you'd expect. They are not reconfigurable.

MOUSE mvmt., L/R arrow keys - controls the first-person camera
MOUSE LEFT - interacts with selectable objects in the game world
MOUSE RIGHT - uses the selected tool
MOUSE WHEEL, U/D arrow keys, number row 1-4 - selects a tool from your inventory
WASD - player character movement
SHIFT (hold) - runs
CAPS - toggles auto-run
NUM - toggles auto-walk
SPACE - jumps
TAB - "kit" menu
ESC - main menu
` - opens/closes Unreal Engine console

There are a few 'hotkeys' which jump to various parts of your "kit" menu, as discussed below.

There is no dedicated save function; Eidolon saves progress automatically each time you engage the game's main menu.

Status Effects

While there are no hard numbers to track, Eidolon does involve some survival-related status effects. These are indicated by round icons which appear in the lower-left corner of the screen, accompanied by transient status messages at lower right.

ALERT (open eye icon) / EXHAUSTED (closed eye icon)
Your character tires easily and needs sleep regularly. (Sleeping is initiated from your "kit" menu; see below.) The alert status usually appears upon waking and will continue for a short time before disappearing. It conveys a bonus to movement speed. Eventually the exhausted status will kick in; you will immediately lose the ability to run (jumping is still fine), and as you continue, your walk speed will gradually slow to a crawl. It's wise to resist the temptation to run everywhere, as frequent running will hasten the state of exhaustion.

HUNGRY/STARVING (stomach icon)
Obtaining food from your environment is also important. Huffin' it across the low-poly landscape turns out to be unusually hungry work. You should consume food soon when the hungry status appears. Eventually the icon will sprout a red border, escalating the status to starving, which can be life threatening.

COLD/FREEZING (snowflake icon)
It's the great Pacific Northwest, and it's chilly. Coming into contact with nearly any body of water will initiate the cold status, as will exposing yourself to the elements in high-altitude, snowy areas of the game world. Soon this status will escalate to freezing, which is life threatening. Removing yourself from the cold will immediately begin to reverse the condition. On land, freezing can also be alleviated by building and snuggling with a campfire.

INJURED (blood drop icon)
Uh-oh — looks like something's done punctured your pixels there, hoss! The injured status appears whenever your general health is poor. This could be due to an animal bite, because of fall damage, or after eating rotten food, for example. In Eidolon, honey is a consumable resource which acts as a miraculous panacea; it is generally required that you "heal" using honey in order to reverse this status effect.

DEATH IMMINENT (skull icon)
When the skull appears, your vision will subsequently begin to dim — get yourself out of whatever fix you're in, or it's curtains for you!

Character Death

Serious injury which does not result in death will cause you to black out. You'll awaken in pretty much exactly the same spot where the incident occurred. And you'll be in need of a healin'.

Character death is fairly forgiving in Eidolon, as it will not cause you to lose any inventory, and you will "awaken" refreshed as if you had gotten a full night's sleep.

However, it's not totally without consequence. There are a small number of spawn points scattered across the huge game world, and death will cause you to respawn at... well, at one or the other of them. This could be a long way indeed from wherever you were when you bit the dust, and there is no "fast travel" in Eidolon — just your own two feet.

So, while hardly catastrophic, character death can certainly throw a wrench in the works in terms of your orientation and progress. And if you are injured without a means of healing yourself, death is likely to follow before too long.

Tools and Artifacts

It's all about 'dem crystals. Aside from gathering resources for your survival, the collection of various crystals from the game environment is the meat 'n potatoes of Eidolon. These crystals are strewn about the landscape, concentrated in some areas and much more sparse in others. They flash brightly and, particularly at night, can often be spotted from a great distance.

There are four white crystals to be found, representing tools. They are totally not inspired by The Hunger Games. All the rest — there are hundreds — are green, representing artifacts.

WHITE Crystals. The four white crystals gift you with tools you'll use in your travels. They can all be found relatively near your initial spawn location. The emphasis is on relatively, keeping in mind that the game world is quite large. But you will likely find most or all of these tools by following the natural lay of the land and poking around a bit, well before you begin collecting many artifacts from the wider world. All four tools are useful, at least one of them indispensably so.

These tools, once you possess them, are cycled/selected with your mouse wheel, or with the up and down arrow keys, or with [1] - [4] on the number row. The right mouse button is used to deploy whichever tool is currently selected.

• FISHING POLE. You can catch fish by casting into literally any body of water. There is a wait of somewhat random duration after you cast, but casting will always result in a bite. You can then collect a tasty fish.
  
• BOW & ARROW. Lucky for you, the bow comes with an infinite supply of arrows. There are a few different uses for this tool, including hunting wild animals for food. Crystals can also be collected by shooting them with arrows rather than just physically bumping into them — in fact there are a few crystals which can only be obtained by shooting them. There's a bit of a learning curve to the aim. But, hey, you have plenty of time and room to practice.
  
• COMPASS. Use it to keep your bearings or maintain your heading. You may find it especially handy in conjunction with the fragmentary maps you'll collect along your way. Keep in mind that the Eidolon game world is, at least abstractly and in highly compressed and simplified form, a somewhat faithful reproduction of the general vicinity of Seattle, Washington.
  
• BINOCULARS. You can spot faraway crystals with them, examine any other distant objects, or scout out questionable terrain from afar.

GREEN Crystals. The many green crystals represent artifacts, parts and pieces of Eidolon's intricate backstory, which is the business of why you're here to begin with.

Some artifacts are scraps of paper: poems, letters, journal entries, sketches, maps. As you find them, they are automatically collected into your journal. Others are digital in nature: emails, blog posts, photographs. These are downloaded to your Lux device.

All artifacts are archived sequentially in the order that you have found them. Most but not all artifacts will come with one or more topical tags attached, indicating that they pertain to particular story threads.

For more on the journal and the Lux, see the "Kit" Menu section just below.

"Kit" Menu

Pressing [TAB] brings up your "kit" menu, by means of which you can interface with your inventory, your journal, and your Lux device.

You can also click the eye icon in this menu to go to sleep for a while (the duration of sleep is always fixed, by the way, not adjustable by the player).

Some sections of the kit menu can be opened directly from play by using shortcut/hotkeys, without having to [TAB] first.

JOURNAL. These are the paper-based artifacts (excepting maps) you've collected in your journey. They are stored here in the order that you found them. Pressing [J] will shortcut you here.

MAPS. Pressing [M] will shortcut you here. This is where any area maps you've found will be stored.

INVENTORY. You guessed it — press I to go directly to your inventory. Here you can view, manage, and use any consumable resources you've collected. Note that your inventory is not limited by weight or quantity.

NOTEBOOK. Here you can type notes to yourself; perhaps it's not a feature you'll use constantly, but it can be handy at times. [N] is the hotkey for this.

LUX. Think of it as a post-apocalyptic iPad, a second journal in digital format. The Lux has a section for digitized text and another for images. Also there is a screen which displays any active status effects, although this is redundant since they also appear on the main gameplay screen. Note that, for flavor's sake, some features of the Lux appear to be deprecated or dysfunctional.

Resources/Consumables

From foodstuffs to firewood, there are a few key resources you'll want to collect as you meander. There are areas of the game world in which some or all of these will be found in relative abundance. But there are also vast swathes of the map in which they are found scarcely or not at all.

TINDER. Tinder can be found on the forest floor here and there, where it looks regrettably like a pile of poo (hell, it may actually be poo). Hold your nose and snatch it up anyway; it's used solely to build campfires, and you don't want to run out of it.

HONEY. Honey is a magical cure-all for injury and illness. It is obtained by using the bow & arrow to shoot a beehive down out of a tree; you can then walk up to the fallen hive and collect the honey. The beehives are found only in a certain variety of deciduous tree with yellow foliage and light brown bark. These trees grow in isolation, or in small stands of two or three. It bee-hooves you to stock up, since honey is usually your only way out of certain health difficulties, and since it is found rarely to never in some parts of the game world. Honey can also be simply eaten as food, but this is not advised — it's far more useful and efficient as a healing agent than as chow. It takes only 1 unit of honey to heal, but choosing to eat it for food may well consume all the honey in your inventory at once. Don't do that!

MUSHROOMS & BERRIES. Manna for the vegetarians among us. There are a couple of varieties of mushroom (though not differentiated in your inventory), and two distinct types of berry. These can be gathered from the ground and from berry bushes, respectively. These items cannot be cooked and will spoil in your inventory if left there too long, so it doesn't make sense to stockpile them long-term — but they do make for scrumptious snacks along the way, if you're in a region where they are plentiful. They do not stave off hunger for as long as meat or fish will.

FISH. As previously discussed, fish is obtained by casting your fishing line into literally any body of water and then waiting a moment or two until you get a bite. Fish spoils after a time when raw, but can be cooked over a campfire to preserve it for later indefinitely.

MEAT. You may occasionally encounter the wayward corpse of a woodland creature which has met its sad demise, in which case you can approach the carcass and collect meat from it. Otherwise, you'll have to hunt live quarry with your bow & arrow if you want steak on the menu. Like fish, meat spoils when raw, but can be cooked over a campfire to make it last forever.

Things That Can Hurt You

While the business of roughin' it is really rather relaxed in Eidolon, it is entirely possible to doom yourself through poor preparation or failure or to pay attention to your status and surroundings. Here's a list of perennial perils to avoid:

CRITTERS. The birds and bees are mostly scenery and will ignore you. But the game world is home to a variety of wild woodland animals. Some, like deer and foxes, show fear and will attempt evasive maneuvers if you approach. Others, such as bears or wolves, will instead quickly attack if you get too close. The appearance and behavior of all these animals are quite primitive; they sometimes can be seen to randomly spawn in the sky, for example. Now and again they can get their heads helplessly lodged into hillsides for no apparent reason.

Animals can be hunted for their meat, but be forewarned that successfully killing an attacking predator can be quite difficult. The attempt is likely to result in your injury or death. You can easily avoid interaction by keeping a safe distance, if need be. There is an art to sneaking up on animals in hunting; direction of approach seems to matter.

Eidolon's main menu allows you to control a "fauna density" parameter. Cranking this up will provide you with a greater abundance of meat sources, yes. But be aware that you are also a meat source for some of them — so it's a tradeoff.

FALL DAMAGE. This can be unpredictable. In some instances Eidolon is forgiving with fall damage, but in others, a mild hop off a low ledge can mysteriously crack a femur or something. You can definitely injure yourself by missteps, and it's particularly an issue at night or during dense morning fog when the visibility range can be alarmingly short.

COLD. The cold can kill you with comic rapidity in some cases. You'll be required to negotiate cold conditions to collect some artifacts — either an invigorating swim in the unnaturally icy waters, or a trek through the preposterously lethal snow — but do be careful, as it's easy to get yourself into frigid troubles that you can't as easily escape. Just because you can see a shoreline or a snow peak doesn't mean you'll make it there before you freeze to death.

ROTTEN FOOD. Don't eat food that has spoiled in your inventory. You might be okay, but then again, you might not. Trust me, it's no way to go. Ugggh.

STARVATION. Yes, you can die from forgetting to eat. And your player character has quite the appetite, let us say. Do mind your stores of food!

General Tips for Getting Started

Below, a collection of hopefully helpful tips for navigating and enjoying Eidolon. Take 'em or leave 'em.

• Eidolon is a thoroughly "anti-Cult of Busy" experience. There is never any reason to rush, unless you've gotten your player character into mortal trouble for the moment. It's slow in pace and casual in format; the game auto-saves your progress every time you access the main menu, and even character death doesn't cause substantial loss of progress. Eidolon is all about contemplative exploration at your own pace and the unfolding of the stories being told through its copious multifaceted lore.
  
  
• It's a good idea to hoard a surplus of tinder and honey from the beginning. If you have plenty of those, and if you have the fishing pole and access to water, you'll be set up to sustain yourself over the long haul.
  
  
• There are various viable styles of play, of course, but I find it's to my advantage to cultivate and mostly adhere to a daily routine, in-game. Maybe fish a little in the morning, explore and/or hunt during the main part of the day, cook in the evening, sleep at night — something like that.
  
  
• Speaking of sleep, the duration is fixed. If you conk out before the stars twinkle, it will still be quite dark when you wake up. If you go to sleep as soon as the night reaches full darkness, it'll be morning when you yawn and stretch. You'll always wake up hungry, so it's okay to go to sleep hungry — otherwise you're just wasting food, since you'll inevitably need to eat as soon as you arise.
  
  
• Remember: you can't always get there from here. And the game world is real, real big!
  
  
• If you've collected some artifacts but feel "stuck" or frustrated as to where to go next, try clicking on one of the topical tags which are attached to most artifacts in your journal or Lux. You'll see a sparkling "trail of clairvoyance" which will point you in the right direction to continue chasing lore on that topic.
  
  
• There's another way to reliably track down artifacts; I won't discuss it explicitly. It's alluded to in the FAQ below, indirectly. You're likely to discover it for yourself in time. Please keep it out of the comments section, as it's a major spoiler.
  
  
• Since you can collect crystals by shooting them with an arrow, why not also use them as target practice as you go along?
  
  
• Campfires are primarily used for cooking food and for bodily warmth. But they have other uses, too, if you're creative, as they're the only evidence you leave behind in your travels.
  
  
• Scattered across the game world are a small number of "swamp" biome regions. You'll likely stumble into them accidentally. Unlike the rest of the water in Eidolon, the swamp water is not cold, and it has other interesting properties.

FAQs (warning: somewhat spoiler-y)

Am I the only human around in Eidolon?
Yes, sometimes it do be like that, though the question is somewhat debatable. The game's POV is as completely first-person as a POV could possibly be, and there are no mirrors or reflections for the curious narcissist. There may be other people around that you don't see. Or, you know, you might not even be human, strictly speaking! Who knows? In any event, you will not encounter any NPCs other than forest critters.

Who am I in this game? Who is my character?
In collecting artifacts and piecing together Eidolon's backstory — which exercise is largely the point of the experience — you'll maybe get a few ideas about this, but it's never explicitly stated who your character is or what the specific mission might be. It's up to your interpretation, really. You are you, is about the most we can say with certainty.

How do I know where to look for artifacts?
You're supposed to roam around. Some artifacts are clustered together in places of import, while others are quite remote. In the event you feel "stuck" or frustrated, you can click on one of the topical tags attached to most artifacts in your journal or Lux to get some direction. There's also another way to reliably track down artifacts, but I will not reveal it. You're likely to discover it yourself in time. Please keep it out of the comments section, as it's a major spoiler.

How many artifacts are there to find?
Though I can't be 100% certain, I do have reason to believe that I may have found all of them. There are well over 200. To be specific, to date I have found:

• 194 journal scraps
  
• 37 Lux texts
  
• 7 Lux pics
  
• 5 journal maps
  
• the 4 tools

Can Eidolon be "won?"
To my knowledge, there is no clear end state to the game. Obviously the number of artifacts to collect is finite, but beyond that basic fact, I have not discovered any final fanfare or finish line.

How do I start a new game?
This is done by erasing your save data from the game's main menu.

What is the basic backstory?
You'll have to sort out the details on your own. That is the point, after all. But the gist of it is that the early 21st-century discovery of a technology which conveys immortality to humans led to a cascading breakdown of society over the next hundred years or so, and you're here to research this history as it pertains to the Seattle, Washington area, where many of the critical developments in the saga took place. Notably, the various stories you'll unearth do not all take place in the same timeframe; they span a few hundred years.

[NecroCombine666]

Totally enjoying it right now. Unsure how long it'll keep it up. I usually run through 4 days at a time following the wild girl clues. However it having no definite ending makes me think I should stop when bored

[cporter1947]

8 years later, the game still is timeless but unfortunately unknown to the masses.

[絕凶！河口最後の武士]

So useful! thx!

[Madnesis]

This guide is gold, great job!

[Teigan]

Honey. And all this time I was looking for willow bark. Urgh. Thanks for the tip!

[bearcanrun]

Awesome Guide! I put in about 10 hrs before I found this and was happy to have figured out most of what you wrote. Though the Hawk tip was news to me — and I followed it promptly to a clue orb placed out in the middle of the water — which led to a swim out and back and the slow narrowing of the view as I "blacked-out" a mere 20yds from shore. And then was revived all the way back at the very beginning. BUahahahah! No responsibility on your part of course.

[cantseetheforest]

@Poopiemonster : Thank you, glad it was helpful. I actually do not know if the game can really end in a conventional sense. Since the artifacts can be collected in just about any order, it doesn't seem that there would be a specific "last one" which would bring about and endgame scenario, but maybe something does happen if you collect all the available evidence in the game. I haven't reached that point myself -- pretty close, but no cigar yet.

[Neo Duncan Shut Up and Jam]

Great FAQ! I have a basic question though. Is there an "end" to the game? Or is the end simply what you thread together from collecting the various scraps from the past? I also totally missed the fact that you could click the journal tags to obtain a guide to the next clue. I'm very glad I read this post.