PAX is always filled with horror titles. Something about the indie scene that PAX fosters draws in the kind of creative minds that feel the pull to create something like oneway.exe or Mouthwashing. It’s glorious.
But, at times, it can feel repetitive. Most horror games are first- or third-person affairs (or sometimes with fixed camera angles), relying on the same menagerie of grotesquerie (and no, I will not simply my language there), despair, and jump scares that have filled the genre ever since the original Alone in the Dark in 1992. That’s not to say that games using those techniques and perspectives can’t be brilliant, but I know there is room for more. Horror comes in many different shapes and sizes, and so I jump whenever I find an unorthodox one.
In comes LOVE ETERNAL, developed by brlka and published by the ever-haunting Ysbryd Games. At PAX West this year, its pitch drew me in immediately. From the game’s Steam page:
“Wander a castle built of bitter memories in LOVE ETERNAL, a psychological horror platformer with devious trials and an unsettling, experimental narrative.”
Now, if you don’t know anything about me, know that almost every single word in that description was tailor-made to grab my interest specifically. Naturally, when given the chance to talk to Toby Alden, the Creative Director and primary mind behind LOVE ETERNAL, I had to have a chat with them. I did so after trying out LOVE ETERNAL’s PAX demo, but it’ll make more sense if I tell you about both the demo and my conversation together. What is the flow of time, anyway?
Well, hopefully more stable than protagonist Maya’s home life, for starters. The game begins with an ordinary scene: a young Maya is called down to dinner with her family. By the time she makes it, however, a house phone begins to ring (presumably, this takes place during a time before cell phones), and she’s tasked with answering it. When she returns, her family is gone.
“It really evokes what it’s like to be a kid, and then to realize something’s wrong.” Toby explained. “Maybe you were in your room, didn’t notice your parents leave for groceries, and find yourself in an empty house. You don’t want to panic, but you don’t know where they are. And, pretty soon… well, pretty soon after that, Maya doesn’t know where she is either.”
Toby is right. Right after Maya’s family vanishes, I’m left with no choice but to wander outside, looking for them. I don’t know what to expect. A jump scare? A monster? Worse: when I leave the house, Maya is standing outside of burnt ruins. The ruins of a house whose only remaining full structure is a door frame.
“It’s definitely psychological horror.” Toby tells me. When I point out how atypical that is for precision platcormers, they further explain. “Yeah, it just makes sense to explore. You know, it’s like… in all these games, you get the power to change the world, and that’s scary. But in LOVE ETERNAL, the world has already changed, or Maya has found her way to a different world. But I thought, ‘what are the odds that that would be a good thing?’ Games like this always take you to new places, but they rarely capture the fear of being somewhere unfamiliar. Unknown. I wanted to do that.”
A fitting answer. I can see what Toby means. I’ve played through countless precision platformers, but never seen one where the setting’s unfamiliarity is leveraged to full effect. Not until LOVE ETERNAL anyway.
But that’s just the start. After the screen outside the house, I make my way through a tutorial, when I’m introduced to the main gimmick of LOVE ETERNAL: with the press of a button, you can change the direction of gravity. But you can only do so once for each time you touch the ground (or a selection of power ups). Celeste’s influence is obvious, and I can’t help but inquire about it.
“There’s a bit of Celeste, yeah. But, mostly, it’s just about flipping the world upside down,” Toby says. Something about the weather they phrase it tells me that they mean that more than literally. The metaphor is almost matter-of-fact: Maya’s world is flipped upside down, so why wouldn’t that be her ability? One thought flows naturally to the next.
The game does the same. It flows seamlessly from difficulty precision Platforming and into a narrative segment. For a while, that just means that I’m going across gaps and through holes in the ceiling in order to progress as Maya.
The challenge increases rapidly but, as a completer of every lever of Super Meat Boy and Celeste, I never find it too difficult to make it through. The others I see playing aren’t so skilled, but none get too stuck. But even though it isn’t the hardest platformer (at least in the first dozen or so screens), it’s difficulty suits it. Any more difficult, and the flow would break. And LOVE ETERNAL is all about seamless flow, in more ways than just it’s stellar movement.
For example: at one point, during am uncharacteristically simple screen, Maya jumps down onto the cave-like floor, only to find herself, at the moment of impact, back in her home. It is empty, for a moment. But soon, a spider-like version of her father appears on the dinner table. Before it can attack, Maya is back in the cave, but… what was that? What just happened? It all happened so seamlessly, one thing to the next to the next.
“I make each screen as I get to it.” Toby says. I almost have to do a double-take. “If there should be a narrative beat, I put it in. A scare? It’s there. Something thematic? Yep. Just a bunch of puzzle rooms one after another, to lower your guard? That too.”
Now, a novel is an endeavor made by one person. One where the author tells a single narrative, front to back, in a single medium, prose. And even within that, almost every single successful author has at least some planning documents to work with. Outlines, notes, “world bibles,” and so forth. That’s for books.
Toby, along with the other developers at brlka, is making a game. Many times more complex than a book. Most games have a design doc, a narrative doc, and a dozen other sporadic notes strewn about. But Toby? Toby just makes it up as they go.
And the proof is in the haunted, psychologically tormented pudding: it creates a feeling unlike anything else in the space. And not just because horror precision-platformers are uncommon, but because this horror precision-platformer really does operate as a stream-of-consciousness.
Given the ethereal unfamiliarity and discomfort that playing LOVE ETERNAL brings, then, “it’s like being in a nightmare.” At least according to Toby. “Or a fever dream.”
It’s not just that things aren’t right. It’s that those not-quite-rights all bleed together, having been crafted from Toby’s mind as they worked. It creates a world with mountains of symbolism, disturbing and unsettling designs, and implications dark enough to hide any truth, while also ensuring that those things fit perfectly… No ideas need to be crammed in, after all, when they are instead made to order.
9ne consequence of this design approach, though, was that Toby didn’t have any answers for me about what the game was about, or where the narrative was going. When I asked, they told me, “It’s going somewhere. I know it’s going somewhere, even if I don’t know where. There’s something about loss. Something about abuse. A lot of things. I don’t know what the game wants to say yet.
“I guess I’ll get there when I get there.”
It’s an almost chilling way to end a conversation. Especially in light of the horrifying situations and scares that LOVE ETERNAL showcases (though I didn’t run into any jump scares, for those who need to know). Something about Toby Alden, the creative director of the game, being unaware of how it ends makes me feel a bit like I’m walking into the unknown with them. For better or worse. After all, I truly don’t know what I’m going to find…
Whatever it is, I’m sure I’ll enjoy it more than Maya does, at the very least. You can wishlist LOVE ETERNAL on Steam here, and I highly encourage it. The mash-up of precision platformers, psychological horror, and art piece works perfectly, with the precision platforming feeling exceptionally tight, the narrative exceptionally intriguing, and the horror especially unsettling.
Toby and the other developers at brlka are going to make something out of LOVE ETERNAL that I just know is going to leave me awake at night. Both because I can’t stop thinking about how to get over that dang jump, and because I can’t stop pondering the imagery on display, and letting it consume me…
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Graves
Graves is an avid writer, web designer, and gamer, with more ideas than he could hope to achieve in a lifetime. But, armed with a mug of coffee and an overactive imagination, he'll try. When he isn't working on a creative project, he is painting miniatures, reading cheesy sci-fi novels, or making music.
