This $10 indie flips gravity and your head — Love Eternal launches today

Why Love Eternal caught my attention – and why you should care

Love Eternal drops today on PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch and PC (Steam) for $9.99, and it’s the kind of indie that makes you stop scrolling. A two-person studio, brlka, has taken masocore-style precision platforming and married it to psychological-horror trappings: you play Maya, a teenager trapped in a ruined, god-controlled castle who can flip gravity mid-jump. It’s compact, unsettling, and priced like an impulse buy – which is exactly why this matters.

• Price and platforms: $9.99 on PS5/PS4, Xbox Series X|S, Switch and Steam – immediate, low-risk buy.
• Core loop: precise, momentum-based platforming built around gravity inversion and tight room-based puzzles.
• Tone: psychological horror through atmosphere, uncanny reflections and monster doppelgängers rather than jump scares.
• Expectations: strong early platforming; several outlets flagged pacing and genre-shifts later in the run.

Breaking down the gameplay: precision platforming with a weird twist

At its heart Love Eternal is a skill-focused platformer. You’ll chain flips, manage momentum, and time arcs to clear spikes, lasers and collapsing architecture. The gravity inversion mechanic is simple on paper — swap floor for ceiling mid-leap — but brlka designs rooms that turn that single trick into tight, masocore-style challenges that reward practice and precision. If you like games that demand respect for physics and momentum (think punishing pixel platformers), there’s a lot to like here.

Where the game pushes beyond pure platforming is its aesthetic and narrative ambition. The castle is less a set of levels and more a fractured mindscape: submerged caverns, iron-age ruins, and warped echoes of Maya’s suburban life. The threats aren’t just spikes — they’re uncanny doppelgängers and an implied god whose motives you slowly unravel through surreal scenes. That’s the psychological-horror angle brlka leans into, using atmosphere and the mechanics themselves to generate dread.

Where it shines — and where reviewers say it stumbles

Multiple early impressions line up: critics praise the opening for delivering satisfying, tight platforming and a distinctive, eerie presentation. Nintendo Life called the first sections “disturbing, devilish” and pointed to hand-painted stages and precision challenges as high points. Xbox Wire highlighted influences like Silent Hill and Twin Peaks in the game’s uncanny mood and named the gravity-flip as a standout mechanical hook.

But there’s a caveat worth knowing before you buy. Reviews and coverage diverge on pacing and structure. TechRaptor and Nintendo Life both note that Love Eternal shifts gears mid-run — inserting point-and-click sequences, meta-narrative detours, and analog-horror interruptions that can undercut the platforming’s momentum and dilute the psychological build. In short: the game is short (TechRaptor’s coverage estimated roughly three hours) and dense with ideas, and some players will love the experimentation while others will find the tonal jumps jarring.

What this means for players

At $9.99, Love Eternal is priced to be sampled. If you’re into handcrafted platforming that punishes and rewards tight control, or you follow indie horror that prefers creeping weirdness to cheap scares, this is an easy recommendation. The short runtime means it’s not a big time sink, but it also means the game’s uneven pacing lands more directly — there’s little filler to smooth transitions between experimental sections.

For players who need a steady, single-genre experience, the mid-game genre detours could be a turn-off. But for those who enjoy indies that try to fuse mechanics and mood (a trend visible in recent niche hits that use mechanical challenge to generate tension), Love Eternal is a provocative, inexpensive play. Publisher Ysbryd Games has a track record with odd, memorable indies, so this fits their wheelhouse.

TL;DR

Love Eternal is a short, smartly designed gravity-flip platformer wrapped in a surreal, psychological-horror coat. At $9.99 across consoles and PC it’s worth a shot if you like precise platforming and mood-driven weirdness — but be prepared for tonal shifts and a compact runtime that won’t grind out its experiments for every player.