Love

Love is a freeware (it originally cost $1 USD, however) platforming game for the PC from a young developer by the name of Fred Wood. Designed, developed, and produced almost solely by himself (the soundtrack was composed by James Bennett). In it, you simply have to make it to the end of the level, avoiding traps and other annoying hazards that hinder your progress towards the end of the game. The game is downloadable in three different forms from www.love-the-game.com.

Gameplay

Controls

Love controls very simply. The player moves using the arrow keys, and jump using the 'A' key. The controls are customizable via the main menu. There are other, more advanced command that are valuable to your success - pressing 'S' will save the player's position on the map (as long as they are on solid ground) so that if the player dies, they'll respawn at that spot, consuming one of their hundred lives in the process. If the player finds himself stuck, he can press up and 'S'. It kills the character and respawns him at the current saved position. Pressing the down key and 'S' at the same time will reset the save, allowing the player to get out of a position they may not be able to otherwise. The game's window is very tiny when the game is launched, but it can be resized by dragging the corner of the screen or going fullscreen by pressing 'F4'.

Gameplay

As stated before, the player has one hundred lives (after which there is a Game Over screen that makes a speech about how useless the player is) to make it to the end of the 20 levels and 4 bonus levels, which are filled with dangerous spikes, pits, lasers, water and all kinds of deadly thing one would encounter in everyday life. Each level has a different theme, and with it different kinds of platforming/jumping puzzles. The levels range from a 'water facility': where one has to navigate their way around fountains, leaks in the ceiling and crumbling platforms to a cave of some sort where the player has to start spelunking their way through a maze of Temple of Doom-like traps and platforms. The air movement is very sharp, but not momentum based like other platformers - one can stop very precisely in midair and start again in the same jump. There is no run speed or anything of the sort, but the Super Mario Bros. feature of holding down the jump button for extra height on the jump is included.

Soundtrack

Love's soundtrack is composed by James Bennet of Sheffield, UK. Bennet describes his music (and thus the game's soundtrack) like "a 45-year old ice cream van making its way to the moon". The soundtrack is available for anyone who financially supports the game. The game contains 11 tracks of music, all played throughout the course of the game. At least two of the tracks featured in Love can be found on Bennett's MySpace.

External Links

Love
James Bennet (some tracks from Love are listenable here)
James Bennet's Last.fm (even more tracks are listenable here, including the title screen music)