The Uncanny Horror of Love Eternal: A Deep Dive with Developer Toby Alden (brlka) and Ysbryd Games

I sat down with developer Toby Alden (brlka) and Rob Cocks from Ysbryd Games to discuss Love Eternal, its influences, and the publisher, Ysbryd. Toby built Love Eternal on the foundation of their 2016 precision platformer Love—same physics engine, entirely different vision. You play as Maya, a kid who gets snatched by a lonely god and trapped in an ancient castle wrapped in chain mesh and bars. The core mechanic, flipping gravity once per jump to navigate deadly rooms, sounds simple until you're threading through spikes, lasers, and switches while piecing together the increasingly disturbing truth about your prison. What we cover: 🎮 Layering psychological horror on top of a tradition of brutally difficult platformers 🎬 Building horror from isolation and childhood experience, not gore 🧠 Creating dread without explicit violence and finding a sense of the uncanny within the mundane 🌀 How the gravity-reversal mechanic actually plays and why the animation sells it 🎵 Sound design that makes cavernous spaces feel massive and wrong 📦 How Ysbryd curates their catalog and supports small teams 🤝 The indie publisher ecosystem and why collaboration beats competition Love Eternal isn't just a precision platformer. The difficulty is there, but it's in the service of a rich psychological horror narrative experience about memory, childhood, and family. Love Eternal is set to launch in 2025 on Steam, PlayStation, Xbox, and Nintendo Switch. Learn more at: https://loveeternalgame.com Wishlist it on Steam, and try the demo: https://store.steampowered.com/app/30... 📺 EXPLODIST MEDIA: Conversations with the people making interesting games. 🔔 Subscribe for more dev interviews 👍 Like this? Let me know 💬 Comment: What psychological horror game got under your skin? 💥 Follow Explodist Media on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/explodist.media #LoveEternal #PsychologicalHorror #PrecisionPlatformer #GameDev #YsbrydGames #brlka #ExplodistMedia #HorrorGaming #PixelArt #IndieHorror #IndieGames #GameDesign #indiedev