Eternal Hope (PC) Review

Combining puzzle solving with platforming, Eternal Hope finds a strange silhouette named Ti'bi and his fairy guide Heli in a haunting underworld landscape. With the ability to glimpse the spirit world and enlist the aid of the spirits who live there, Ti'bi must make his way across the land and collect the missing fragments of his lover's soul. It is a game full of potential it never quite capitalizes on.

It manages to combine puzzles and platforming relatively well. Sadly, sloppy controls make the platforming side difficult, while some puzzles rely too heavily on guess-and-check methods or a certain fairy guide bluntly giving out the answer, highlighting the imbalances in the design. This continues on into the characters' designs. While the main character's design and animations are plain, the spirit creatures are gorgeous and frightening.

Although the story has a decent premise, the finer details are mostly contrived and overall do not really make any sense. The storybook art style and simple writing might have lent themselves well to a children's game, but the frightening creatures and visible blood steer the game in another, more mature, direction. In other words, the biggest problem is that Eternal Hope just does not seem to know what it wants to be.

A lot of really good ideas for this style of game are present, but unfortunately nothing ever feels polished or is explored enough to rise to greatness. As mentioned above, the big stand-outs are the creature designs. Some of the puzzles, that rely on interacting with them, show promise, but otherwise Eternal Hope feels a lot like aimlessly wandering around a pretty landscape and making wild guesses at what to do next. In the end the game is far from bad, but it is hard to call it anything more than an average puzzle/platformer with an interesting art direction and a few shining moments.