Love Eternal Review – I Wanna Be the Purgatory

Simplicity is best when honing an indie adventure, but don’t let me be the one to tell you how far that simplicity can go. From a systems standpoint, the Brika-developed psychological horror platformer is an adventure game in which you play as a girl who can reverse gravity. See, simple, right? Who would have guessed that this mechanic would push my gamer skills to their breaking point as I fell deeper down this gothic rabbit hole of platforming excellence? While I don’t think I’ve ever reviewed a game like this, I’ll do my best. And honestly, part of me was excited to keep slamming my head against it until something clicked, even if it meant metaphorically patching the hole in the wall afterward.

Story and Atmosphere

From its opening, Love Eternal leaves you with questions. After a simple request for our lead, Maya, to come to dinner and then answer a phone call, we’re pulled into a strange reality where your only goal is to move forward. Early trials provide just enough instruction to ground you in this labyrinthine space. If the developer aimed to make the player feel disoriented, it worked, and that feeling lingers through much of the experience. The stark presentation and minimal frills amplify that mood, with horror elements quietly lurking at the edges of the screen rather than screaming for attention.

I typically open my reviews with comments about the story, but Love Eternal doesn’t give them up easily. Throughout the game, players hit narrative milestones that offer small clues about what this purgatory even is. What the game lacks is feedback for the player. The options, including window size on PC, are very limited. I would have preferred a way to track how many puzzles you’ve cleared to better gauge when the next milestone is coming. Maya would also benefit from an in-game journal that tracks the time she’s spent in this place, which would likely get players onboarded a bit quicker.

Core Gameplay and Difficulty

The reality is that you have to be really good at platformers to see this narrative through. There are no shortcuts, helpful abilities, or auto-clear features, so keep that in mind before taking on this adventure. Once some of the pieces click, you’ll have a much better idea of what’s going on and what Maya has to do. That said, there are moments where the momentum feels a bit hard to read. If you flip gravity a fraction too early, you’re dead. A fraction too late, you’re also dead. Precision platformers thrive on that tension, but here I occasionally felt like I was guessing rather than fully in control, which might come down to limited visual or tactile feedback. You can probably guess there’s going to be a lot of intense platforming shenanigans required to make that happen.

The tutorial levels of Love Eternal are pretty smart, but I think the developer should have added general practice stages in the main menu. I personally felt there was a quick ramp-up in difficulty after the tutorial, and that may hurt overall player progress. That said, if you’re expecting a challenging platformer, you’ve found it.

Gravity Mechanic and Level Design

Maya has only one real ability. She can reverse gravity, sending her flying to the roof. However, she can only do this once before it needs to recharge when she touches the ground. There are also orbs that recharge the ability, which means players will need to navigate stages without touching the ground at all in some cases. It’s incredible to encounter these clever layouts, fail more than a few times, and eventually overcome the challenge. The sound design does a lot of heavy lifting here. Maya’s footsteps and the sharp snap of a reversed jump are tactile and satisfying, adding weight to every attempt and making each success feel earned.

Very little is reused from board to board. Before I get too ahead of myself, this does move away from the typical flow of games that teach you a move and then force you to use it repeatedly until a new move appears. Since Maya only has her gravity ability, the developers push that single mechanic to its peak through genuinely smart stage design. It took me days of playing to clear some boards in one try, and that accomplishment becomes rarer in the later stages.

Pacing and Technical Performance

Throughout the game, you’ll eventually hit moments of relief with stretches of rooms that don’t force you to take ten deep breaths before trying again. It’s also here that the story scenes play out. I did run into a few crashes following some of these scenes, and there were rare moments where performance caused stuttering. On the other hand, performance on Steam Deck was surprisingly efficient, with very low power draw during my sessions, which made longer grind sessions easier to justify. For the most part, though, I suspect the glitches I encountered will be patched out.

Visuals and Quality of Life

Visually, Maya explores several themes, but the overall look remains consistent. The developers used handmade pixel assets to build this world, which is great because you know there’s someone to blame for placing that one spike that keeps killing you. Thankfully, save points are numerous, but you have to manually save at them. I understand that some players want to torture themselves in platformers and never save, but 99 out of 100 players will likely want to. An option to enable auto-save should be added. I would also love to see stronger controller feedback, even subtle vibration on landing, to give jumps a bit more impact. And while the levels are tightly designed, the movement system is so strong that I found myself wishing for more hidden routes or secrets tucked into some of these brutal platforming sections.

Final Verdict and Overall Experience

Love Eternal tested my patience in ways I wasn’t always prepared for, but I can’t deny how locked in I felt while playing it. There were nights when I would clear a single room after dozens of attempts and just sit there staring at the screen, knowing the game had completely outplayed me until I adapted. That kind of design doesn’t hold your hand, and it doesn’t care if you bounce off it either.

Still, there’s something admirable about how focused this experience is. One mechanic. One goal. Move forward. If you’re willing to meet it on its terms and accept that you’re going to fail a lot before you succeed, there’s a strange satisfaction waiting for you at the end of this purgatory. Just don’t say I didn’t warn you. I genuinely hope this one finds its audience, because even when it pushed me to exhaustion, I couldn’t stop thinking about the next room and how I might finally clear it.