It’s not every day a game has such a profound emotional effect on me, and even less so with pixel art platformers. But Love Eternal is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played, and in all the most complimentary ways. The way it subverts expectations and shifts its gameplay style in meta, fourth-wall breaking ways is not something I expected going in, but the full experience is all the better for it.
Developed by Brika and published by Ysbyrd Games, Love Eternal is a short-and-sweet puzzle platformer with a bit of a macabre psychological horror-focused narrative. Restricting this game to just one genre is doing it a massive disservice, as there are a few moments where you take a break from the platforming for deep, emotional cutscenes, and even play through certain story beats through a first-person point-and-click adventure perspective, which really drive home the uncanny and creepy nature of its characters.
You play as Maya, a teenage girl whisked away from her family by a dreadful, lonely, and selfish deity. This cursed goddess has the ability to either take the form of or possess any person she interacts with, leading to some extremely creepy moments throughout–it isn’t entirely clear just what the extent of her powers are. While the story is undoubtedly interesting and the horror elements land really well, I did find the story to be a bit too esoteric to coherently follow along with, and by the time I had credits rolling I was still left confused. Despite this, the overall experience is extremely well done, and at only a four-or-five-hour run time is worth the attention for fans of challenging platformers.
The meat and potatoes of Love Eternal is its over 100 platforming challenges, each a different room in the mad goddess’ seemingly endless prison. The hand-drawn pixel art is gorgeous, and lends itself well to this style of game. What sets this apart from others of its ilk is the gravity mechanic–Maya can reverse gravity to walk on the ceiling. This not only makes for extremely dynamic and flawlessly-designed puzzles, but adds a significant challenge. The first 10 or so rooms are basic, offering one or two jumps with the occasional gravity flip that serve as a sort of tutorial. But there’s a steep learning curve when it comes to mastering the reversed gravity mechanics.
After maybe 20 screens of platforming challenges, the game introduces red crystals. Normally, you can only perform a gravity flip once before touching the surface again, but touching a red crystal in mid air will reset this, allowing you to flip again. This shook up the formula my brain was getting used to, and I died multiple times trying to master it in the earlier stages. Luckily, checkpoints, represented by a beam of white light protruding from the ground, are extremely forgiving. Each room will have at least one, and the time between dying and respawning is blink of an eye. You will definitely die, again and again, but I appreciate the lack of downtime between attempts.
Love Eternal is by no means an easy game. Dying is expected, and there were a couple times where I honestly wanted to give up. But I tried, and tried again, and eventually found my way out of some of the game’s toughest challenges. The rewarding feeling I got from beating a difficult platform challenge (especially the final one–that surely raised my blood pressure) was a euphoric event that I’m sure Souls fans can relate with, but sometimes thinking outside of the box wasn’t the right strategy. More than once I died because I was overthinking the situation. Sometimes all I had to do was a regular jump without flipping, or move to another ledge. The gravity mechanics retrained my brain for better and for worse–not every room was as complex as I anticipated.
Love Eternal‘s platforming mechanics and controls are some of the most fluid and responsive I’ve felt in a game. Jumping and flipping in mid air feels incredible. Maya doesn’t feel too floaty, something the game hilariously comments on in an extremely meta moment — without spoiling too much, close to the end of the game you’ll play through tough platforming rooms through the perspective of a Vtuber as if she were streaming, and she said aloud (often verbatim) almost every note I took for this very review. It’s this sort of self-awareness that earned Love Eternal a rent-free spot in my head, with a humbly impressed nod to brlka; this studio knows what they’re doing.
As with any horror game, good sound design is crucial. Luckily, this game absolutely nails that as well, both with its music and in-game sound effects. I compare Maya’s jumping sound effect to a tennis ball being whacked against a racket, and it’s so, so satisfying to hear.
I was so enthralled by my time with Love Eternal that I finished the entire game in one sitting. Not just because of its gameplay–usually difficult games like this are a turn off for me, personally. But even though it is undoubtedly challenging, the frictionless and expeditious nature of retrying rooms jived with my brain, reducing frustration I’d normally feel after failing too often. No, what kept me glued to my TV for four hours straight was its story, characters, and the odd, meta ways the game subverts expectations with the massive tonal and mechanical shifts peppered throughout that were truly unexpected.
It’s not every day a game has such a profound emotional effect on me, and even less so with pixel art platformers. But Love Eternal is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played, and in all the most complimentary ways.
It’s not every day a game has such a profound emotional effect on me, and even less so with pixel art platformers. But Love Eternal is one of the weirdest games I’ve ever played, and in all the most complimentary ways. The way it subverts expectations and shifts its gameplay style in meta, fourth-wall breaking ways is not something I expected going in, but the full experience is all the better for it.
Developed by Brika and published by Ysbyrd Games, Love Eternal is a short-and-sweet puzzle platformer with a bit of a macabre psychological horror-focused narrative. Restricting this game to just one genre is doing it a massive disservice, as there are a few moments where you take a break from the platforming for deep, emotional cutscenes, and even play through certain story beats through a first-person point-and-click adventure perspective, which really drive home the uncanny and creepy nature of its characters.
You play as Maya, a teenage girl whisked away from her family by a dreadful, lonely, and selfish deity. This cursed goddess has the ability to either take the form of or possess any person she interacts with, leading to some extremely creepy moments throughout–it isn’t entirely clear just what the extent of her powers are. While the story is undoubtedly interesting and the horror elements land really well, I did find the story to be a bit too esoteric to coherently follow along with, and by the time I had credits rolling I was still left confused. Despite this, the overall experience is extremely well done, and at only a four-or-five-hour run time is worth the attention for fans of challenging platformers.
The meat and potatoes of Love Eternal is its over 100 platforming challenges, each a different room in the mad goddess’ seemingly endless prison. The hand-drawn pixel art is gorgeous, and lends itself well to this style of game. What sets this apart from others of its ilk is the gravity mechanic–Maya can reverse gravity to walk on the ceiling. This not only makes for extremely dynamic and flawlessly-designed puzzles, but adds a significant challenge. The first 10 or so rooms are basic, offering one or two jumps with the occasional gravity flip that serve as a sort of tutorial. But there’s a steep learning curve when it comes to mastering the reversed gravity mechanics.
After maybe 20 screens of platforming challenges, the game introduces red crystals. Normally, you can only perform a gravity flip once before touching the surface again, but touching a red crystal in mid air will reset this, allowing you to flip again. This shook up the formula my brain was getting used to, and I died multiple times trying to master it in the earlier stages. Luckily, checkpoints, represented by a beam of white light protruding from the ground, are extremely forgiving. Each room will have at least one, and the time between dying and respawning is blink of an eye. You will definitely die, again and again, but I appreciate the lack of downtime between attempts.
Love Eternal is by no means an easy game. Dying is expected, and there were a couple times where I honestly wanted to give up. But I tried, and tried again, and eventually found my way out of some of the game’s toughest challenges. The rewarding feeling I got from beating a difficult platform challenge (especially the final one–that surely raised my blood pressure) was a euphoric event that I’m sure Souls fans can relate with, but sometimes thinking outside of the box wasn’t the right strategy. More than once I died because I was overthinking the situation. Sometimes all I had to do was a regular jump without flipping, or move to another ledge. The gravity mechanics retrained my brain for better and for worse–not every room was as complex as I anticipated.
Love Eternal‘s platforming mechanics and controls are some of the most fluid and responsive I’ve felt in a game. Jumping and flipping in mid air feels incredible. Maya doesn’t feel too floaty, something the game hilariously comments on in an extremely meta moment — without spoiling too much, close to the end of the game you’ll play through tough platforming rooms through the perspective of a Vtuber as if she were streaming, and she said aloud (often verbatim) almost every note I took for this very review. It’s this sort of self-awareness that earned Love Eternal a rent-free spot in my head, with a humbly impressed nod to brlka; this studio knows what they’re doing.
As with any horror game, good sound design is crucial. Luckily, this game absolutely nails that as well, both with its music and in-game sound effects. I compare Maya’s jumping sound effect to a tennis ball being whacked against a racket, and it’s so, so satisfying to hear.
I was so enthralled by my time with Love Eternal that I finished the entire game in one sitting. Not just because of its gameplay–usually difficult games like this are a turn off for me, personally. But even though it is undoubtedly challenging, the frictionless and expeditious nature of retrying rooms jived with my brain, reducing frustration I’d normally feel after failing too often. No, what kept me glued to my TV for four hours straight was its story, characters, and the odd, meta ways the game subverts expectations with the massive tonal and mechanical shifts peppered throughout that were truly unexpected.
by Myles Obenza
