For some reason, I've always gravitated towards difficult precision platformers - the more masochistic the better. From the gravity flipping VVVVVV, to the tense sequences in Super Meat Boy. Straight away, Love Eternal reignites similarities to both, and quickly turns into its own unique hybrid of part hardcore precision 2D platformer, part psychological horror interactive adventure game.

Developed by the studio Brlka, including Toby Alden who many years ago, originally made the game, Love, the influence and starting point that Love Eternal was built upon, like a skeleton waiting for its skin. Now a layered, emotional game with many surprises, published by Ysbryd Games who recently published Demon School.

Video Review: LOVE ETERNAL

In Love Eternal, you play as Maya, a young, lonely schoolgirl who is kidnapped by a forsaken deity. She's trapped in a beautiful yet haunting castle, full of dangerous caverns and ruins. Either she succumbs to the whims of her captor - or overcomes deadly traps and escapes the castle's mind bending realities.

Tonally, it feels like it pulls at the edges of something like Mouthwashing, Junji Ito, the fears in Little Nightmares and the real childhood fear of abandonment. It uses a grotesque collection of unsettling imagery to warp the ordinary into incomprehensible visions, that juxtapose Maya's situation.

Right from the off, Maya returns from a phonecall to find her family have disappeared. She doesn't understand why or where they've gone; she's alone and afraid. But she continues on by searching outside of her house. But your house is no longer there, it's a pile of ash on burnt ruins. Now, you don't know where your family is or where you are. Panic takes over. A reverb heavy score echoes and mimics your isolation, washing over you. You're alone.

Without spoiling the twists and turns of the tail end of Love Eternal, these thematic beats of loneliness, depression, grief and identity continue to develop into school and friendship experiences. Everything is compounded by impactful writing and an effective use of minimal voice work. The narrative is intentional and poignant to drive home it's messages, but still open for interpretation.

On a base level, the key component of Love Eternal is precision platforming, and if that failed, the whole game would crumble. Fortunately, it's responsive and pixel perfect. It avoids the pitfall of feeling floaty and makes for a fair experience that relies on developing player skill. This isn't ideal for accessibility, but it does represent the themes of the game.

Maya has the ability to run and jump, and like in VVVVVV she can invert gravity to land on platforms above you and vice versa. Love Eternal starts off by combining this gravity shifting with Maya's jump ability, to slowly develop a player's skill as each screen builds in complexity. But the real game changer is the introduction of red crystals: a material that replenishes Maya's gravity shifting skill. Opening up the entire game to complex puzzle designs that combine tense precision platforming where she must dodge spikes and lasers to reach levers and escape to the next even harder screen.

But fear not, Love Eternal does feature a generous checkpoint system in the form of white glowing cylinders. These are placed at the beginning and end of scenes, as well as in the middle of particularly hard sections. Obviously, there are a few scenes that purposely limit checkpoints to add to the challenge of the later game. But I never found them unfair. I rarely found myself stuck for more than a few minutes, but on the odd occasion that I did, I could simply turn it off and then return to that exact point.

Surprisingly, the pinpoint platforming isn't all Love Eternal has to offer. It contains an adventure game portion that continues the psychological horror. But no cheap tricks or jump scares are needed. Simply intricate pixel art, animations and solid narrative design. As Maya, you can select dialogue choices, look around rooms, use items and talk to people. Everything has meaning or symbolism like Maya's manga. Just like the music, everything builds atmosphere to bring forth your own familiar emotions and to be able to emphasise with Maya's anxieties. It's extraordinarily immersive and effective.

Let me be clear - Love Eternal is predominantly a psychological horror. However, it does have moments of levity. When the first voice over happened, it surprised me. Without spoiling the surprise, it's another brilliant narrative tool that made me laugh at my own gameplay failures.

Also, the strength of the sound design resonates thematically, as Maya jumps around the large environments, the beautifully eerie score drills in the fact that Maya is alone. At only a few pixels tall, she's dwarfed by beautifully hand drawn, often incongruous environments such as the muted colour palette of the castle, a gigantic dog shrine and the remains of a burnt down suburban house. And although Maya and the deity are lonely, they long for similar companionship in very different ways. The deity's nightmare castle, twisted by grief and longing, contrasts with the different challenges the modern era presents for making real and meaningful social connections.

At $9.99, Love Eternal is surprisingly affordable for a quality game and exceptional piece of art. As long as you go in knowing that the main gameplay is a hardcore platformer, players will discover an exceptional narrative journey that will stick around in your mind long after the game has finished. On its own, it's a fun precision platformer, but as a whole, it's a striking commentary on human fears and social connections, that I'd recommend anyone to play.

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