LOVE ETERNAL (Transcendental Psychological Horror Platformer)
Spider dad? Is there anything upstairs? What’s next? Alright, so the first time I gave LOVE ETERNAL a whirl was on an overnight flight (unexpected peak gaming conditions, highly recommend), and I was actually hypnotized. There’s a deception of the way time passes while playing this that I seriously thought was a result of, you know, being on a plane. My second playthrough, very much on the ground, informed me otherwise. Now it’s not the Silent Hill-esque psychological horror you might expect from the genre, let alone a platformer, but something entirely different that succeeds through emphasis of atmosphere. Crafted through a collage of unsettling imagery and transcendental ambience, there’s something about LOVE ETERNAL that tells me you know nothing until you know everything…
LOVE ETERNAL utilizes an experimental narrative style following Maya’s escape from a lonely god’s castle as she finds her way back to her family. Inspired by one of the developer’s former games, Love, there is a precedent of platform-level design and mechanics that feel refined and distinctive, leaving the direction of the storyline to take its exploratory route. Through seamlessly blended, and increasingly riddlish levels, your focus deceives a comfort of routine only to be disrupted by… well, that’s for you to find out 😛 Maya is light and airy, projecting a dreamy, childlike feel to the way she maneuvers that creates an extra level of immersion as you have to think intergravitationally, blurring the concept of reality within the castle. As an artist myself, I would be remiss to not mention the impeccable art put forth in LOVE ETERNAL. The use of higher resolution pixel art is a stunning visual decision that offers an intense range of complexity in different scenes and plays a pivotal role in selling the drastic shifts in scale. Hard cuts between scenes, transporting you from domesticity to Monolithic structures that effectively dwarf Maya, jolt and effectively stun. The eerie environment is punctuated by more human-made obstacles composed of spikes and lever-activated lasers that maintain a threat to your sanity (bless instant respawns). Magnificently atmospheric, the sound design builds suspense, and is terrifyingly absent, save for echoing footsteps to raise tension. I definitely had many doubts regarding pixel art’s ability to enhance the psychological plotlines, and I’m actually quite shocked at my positive reaction. I found it actually protects the uncanny nature of this game’s visuals, allowing the ambiguity of pixel arrangements to contort familiar figures and create monstrosity out of comfort (cough,cough, dad head spider thing, cough). It allows the subtleties of a more sinister force lurking in the background to exist in its unique manifestation.
Written by Izzy, Oracle of the Night’s Last Oath
LOVE ETERNAL
brlka (developer) and Ysbryd Games (publisher)
4.8 / 5
