Love Eternal Review

Love Eternal from developer brlka and publisher Ysbryd Games is the kind of indie darling that makes you question why you enjoy suffering and then asks you to do it again for one more screen to appear more difficult than that last. If you’ve been looking for a game that blends the precision platforming with the psychological horror of some sorts, you’ve found your match. But is it actually fun, or just a beautiful nightmare?

The game kicks off with Maya, a teenager having a painfully relatable, awkward dinner with her family. Whilst not much dialogue you get the sense of Maya being a typical teenager who wants to be left alone and has a grudge somehow. The phone rings in the other room and you are asked to answer it. You go to answer it. When you walk back into the dining room, your family is gone. The house is a wreck. And suddenly, you aren’t in the house anymore. You’ve been snatched by lonely deity who has decided you’re the perfect candidate to inhabit its crumbling, memory-filled castle. From there, the goal is simple: escape.

Love Eternal is a precision platformer, like many games the mechanics will feel familiar, but they are quick, snappy and punishing. Maya doesn’t have a double jump or a dash. Instead, she can flip gravity at the press of a button. Whilst simple at the start of just avoiding drops, you find yourself uncovering the horror narrative and getting deeper into the castle and the levels getting harder with many more traps such as spikes, lasers and pits. Eventually the puzzles become rock solid and there are crystals you can collect to allow you to flip again which creates a lot of tricky, time-based stages that need quick reaction times to navigate a tonne of level screens to progress. Save points are very kind and plenty but still find yourself in a barrage of cheap and easy deaths that test your mental.

However, be warned the difficulty curve isn’t so much a curve as it is a brick wall you occasionally run into. Most of the game is a steady, tough but a fair climb and some stages in between you can find yourself locked out through sheer frustration and sometimes all it takes is a small reset and you get it first time. If you are using audio especially headphones there’s a dark and creepy soundtrack filled with awkward space and drones give you this extra layer of feeling on edge and wanting to progress and escape as quick as you can forcing your hand at dying over and over again making quick and simple mistakes.

The atmosphere this game creates is up there with the best, the pixel art in is gorgeous in a very specific, haunting way. Having a lack of dialogue but most of the talking is about what on screen gives this story a visual novel feel with most of the story being told by action and accomplishment. Even though there is not much interaction you get the sense of Maya and who she is as a person meeting family members along the way that are distorted versions of themselves that captures this eerie unfolding story. Going through this castle you get a feel of all these emotions through Maya such as childhood isolation and the lack of companionship.

You’ll likely finish the game with more questions than you started with, but the feeling it leaves you with is undeniable. This is one game you need to take time with and be patient, it is frustrating in parts but leaves an imprint and is up there as an indie gem for me this year.