LOVE ETERNAL Review

LOVE ETERNAL makes a handful of massive swings, an accomplishment for a platformer that lasts about 4 hours.

Yet developer brlka’s game isn’t merely a platformer, one where challenging jumps and instant deaths feel at home in an ecosystem that is constantly finding ways to churn players through a grinder. LOVE ETERNAL also fashions itself as a horror game. Again, that’s quite a statement considering the crux of gameplay is avoiding spiked walls and caustic lasers.

When placed against its fellows, LOVE ETERNAL may initially not feel as unique as it promises to be. Spooky vibes and eerie environments don’t make a game scary or even relatively nerve-wracking. But platformers can cause a high degree of trepidation for players.

Though I’ve only banked about an hour into Celeste, I see it in LOVE ETERNAL. The pointed surfaces that cause our character to burst into particles upon impact certainly brought back memories of Super Meat Boy‘s fleshy explosions against saw blades. And for the “oldies” like me, a smattering of I Wanna Be the Guy seeped into my consciousness.

LOVE ETERNAL is fully styled after a rung of platformers that give the player no quarter. Death comes quick. One screen can result in dozens of deaths. I’m sure the last hurdle in the game–announced with the text “Final Challenge”–crushed me beneath its boot almost a hundred times.

But I never became mad at LOVE ETERNAL. I uttered my fair share of “fucks” and “damnits” upon an unceremonious death or a brutal one where I failed at the last step of a room. In the same breath, however, I would laugh at a mistake or utter a drawn-out hiss because I knew I was so close. Numerous times I died once, twice, or not at all, seemingly infusing myself with god-tier gaming abilities and feeling smug about being good at challenging content.

Fundamentally, there isn’t much to explain with LOVE ETERNAL. It is a difficult platformer. It is a brutal gauntlet of jumping challenges that ask the player to pay attention to timing, placement, and physics. As Maya, a dark-skinned girl with a shock of white hair and a purplish-red dress, players will die if they come into contact with the game’s handful of instant-death obstacles.

Maya is on the growing list of platforming protagonists that has been entrusted with the powers of speech. Almost no character in LOVE ETERNAL has an audible voice. There are no MIDI grunts and groans, no synthesized shouts. But Maya does speak in the game using text, as do the members of her family and the handful of characters she comes across.

Though I am tempted to say absolutely no characters speaks in the game–a rule that holds significance–it would be a lie because the game has a way of breaking its own rules. That’s because brlka uses the foundation of a platformer and the bones of level design to break expectations, along with the fourth wall.

Navigating the obstacles laid forth in each screen of LOVE ETERNAL is absolutely a central pillar of its enjoyment. Players seeking a fierce challenge will find more intricate and lengthier ones in other games. Yet none of them handle it the way brlka does here.

While that may feel as if I’m propping up LOVE ETERNAL as something wholly unique and special, that isn’t entirely the case. Were I to make the closest comparison, VVVVVV is the game LOVE ETERNAL aligns itself with most. Remember that game? God it feels like forever ago but it truly was one of the stalwart indie games back in 2010 and has a lasting legacy.

In VVVVVV, players controlled Captain Viridian on his search for his lost crewmates. The twist was that gravity was a bit funky and easily manipulated. Viridian could reverse gravity and walk on the ceilings. The game became an increasingly complex dance of multi-screen challenges and tricks, watching Viridian flip up and down in hopes of landing on solid ground.

LOVE ETERNAL follows that same framework. Maya can jump and, mid-flight, can flip herself up, the ceiling becomes the floor and vice-versa. However, gravity cannot be shifted until Maya finds solid ground again.

Soon into the game, floating red crystals are seen. By touching them, Maya can flip directions again.

It doesn’t take mental gymnastics to understand where this is going. Players must wrap their brains and skills around when to jump Maya over a spat of spikes, flip, and land safely. Maybe she will need to zig and zag around tight configurations mid-descent or ascent. Perhaps she will be suspended in air for several seconds as players bounce and fall between red crystals to keep her delicate body of flesh and blood from being fatally punctured.

Along the way, there will be scenarios where the player triggers levers that turn off or move lasers. Some platforms will move. A few tricks require precise timing and planning. The largest mechanic that brlka has players work around is the physics of Maya’s gravity switch. When players hit a red crystal, she doesn’t instantly drop up or down. Instead, there’s a few brief moments the weight of her body has to recover from the shift. Numerous puzzles center around this precise timing, making sure players don’t change gravity too soon or too late.

Most importantly, it’s fun.

I would be lying to you if I claimed that LOVE ETERNAL wasn’t a bit frustrating at times. A handful of rooms absolutely tested my mettle, along with my patience. Despite that, it would be dishonest to say that these difficult junctures didn’t have me cheering when I surmounted them. brlka squeezed almost every last ounce of juice out of this particular orange, to the point where I wasn’t left wanting. Certainly they could have loaded up on rooms and made a bigger game.

Instead, those four hours comprising LOVE ETERNAL are brutal, tense, and shockingly engaging.

Yet that doesn’t stem entirely from the platforming. While a bulk of those hours are players controlling Maya and her gravity-defying leaps, it’s the other half of the LOVE ETERNAL that shoves the game into a distinct limelight, making it absolutely unforgettable.

Often enough, I have trouble remaining focused and on topic in a review. There are too many ways to talk about mechanics and story and what you loved in a game and what you didn’t like so much. My brain has a tendency to bounce around thoughts, wanting to cover what is important and being comfortable with forgetting less important details.

LOVE ETERNAL is an extremely enjoyable platformer if you view it through the myopic lens of the genre. It might feel like I’m skimming over the gameplay and its mechanics but I’m really not. Does one really need to know the intricate details of a platforming game when there are none? And saying that may come across reductive but I’m just being honest about what LOVE ETERNAL offers in terms of gameplay.

Every part of me wishes to dive into LOVE ETERNAL‘s most special element. Still… it’s a delicate topic.

As a horror platformer, what can a small game like this possibly accomplish? Maya wakes up, goes to the dining room where her family is eating, leaves to answer a ringing phone, and returns to find her family gone. She leaves her house and finds it dilapidated and in a strange, deadly place.

The remainder of LOVE ETERNAL centers around Maya and the player chipping away at these platforming challenges, all while peeling back layers of the narrative. To provide any kind of hint, no matter how subtle–would rob the player of discovery, discovery that comes at a fairly rapid pace.

Know that along the way there are quiet moments where there is no death. Perhaps players will run into a screen where the background of the mysterious temple reveals an ancient fresco depicting some human that stretches off-screen. Should you be lucky enough, more will be revealed as Maya progresses.

Strange almost Lynchian elements begin to bubble over the muted narrative. The normal begins to transmogrify in freakish ways, unsettling the player, only to have the rug pulled and sent right back to gameplay.

Though LOVE ETERNAL never truly scared or horrified me, brlka’s world still impacted me, getting under my skin. I was uncertain what would happen next, where the narrative was truly going. Who are these new characters? What’s the deal with these dogs?

And as if an answer was right around my grasp, LOVE ETERNAL, with the snap of a finger, deprives me of true satisfaction. Not because it wants to deny me. It’s because brlka introduces an absolutely unexpected shift to its gameplay and its story. I sat there confused but grinning like an idiot. I’m sure some may find it pretentious but that is looking at it from a surface level, lacking any inquisitiveness.

And again it happens.

Yet this time when LOVE ETERNAL shifts back to gameplay, it reconfigures expectations. It throws in a new elements that persists. It calls out to the player, staring us right in the face. It makes us question what is really going on and if we understand the nature of play.

Please, do not attempt to sift too hard through these disjointed, excited thoughts. It all makes the most sense when LOVE ETERNAL is emblazoned on your screen and you’re controlling Maya yourself.

Once credits rolled I was left flabbergasted. Impressed was putting it mildly. LOVE ETERNAL is a strange game, a fascinating experiment in the medium. Gripes? Yes, I have them. I ran into a bug that caused the sound to go out and I had to reset. But it also made me notice how minimal the sound was, lamenting that the soundtrack wasn’t more eerie and present. Infrequently, the pixelated colors can be a little muddy. And at times, the physics felt hard to predict.

None of this marred LOVE ETERNAL‘s phenomenal rollercoaster ride. My desire to go back and play again to try and earn a better understanding of the twisted logic of its narrative was strong. The game builds towards a confusing finale, one where the puzzle pieces seemingly don’t figure together. And perhaps they never will. Sometimes, the greatest mysteries are the ones that don’t have a singular truth or answer.

LOVE ETERNAL breaks through numerous boundaries in its short time. Deemed a horror platformer, developer brlka posits a game that can be multiple things at once, transcending expectations. Primarily a deeply challenging game about jumping, LOVE ETERNAL uses narrative as a way to wedge itself between the player and predictability, evolving into a thrilling work of entertainment.