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...
