Eternity's Child Reviews

I never thought I'd play a modern video game that reminded me of Action 52, but here it is. I don't even know where to start with this terribly unfinished game. First: Who are these characters? What is going on with the story? IS there a story?? I found there is supposed to be a plain text crawl explaining the story & characters of this game (a lazy move on part of the designers there, one of many), but when the game starts, there is no such thing. Everything you do has no context as to why you're doing it. The bubbles that slowly describe the game's few controls on the first stage are so slow that you're trying to read these things as you're endlessly shooting stuff that wants to fly right into your face and at weird angles, even for a platformer. The controls are a total mess, you slide off platforms if you don't angle your blurry jumps just so, if you can see where you're jumping that is. The camera likes to stick on your character's position in such a way that you are often jumping blindly into who knows what, more likely than not, it's something that will kill you. Jumping is iffy at best with having to learn the trick to getting a decent jump without slipping off edges or even getting to a higher up platform. This would be fine if there was a way to grab platform edges, there isn't. I don't understand the point of having two characters to worry about if the one you actually move doesn't do anything else but that, the flying girl shoots at enemies & nothing else. This is really unnecessary & could have been done better with just one character doing these things. Many, many sections of the game, both while playing & in the menus, appears to be either really buggy, unfinished, or both. I'm betting on both. Even for an episodic game (which I can see why the sub-sequent chapters never saw daylight), there should have better effort on cleaning this game up, at least so someone knows wtf is going on when they start playing. Again, an intro would have been nice here. Another odd happening is that I got a totally different level 3 on later playthroughs, sometimes happening before I was done in the last area. No warning, just a new level out of nowhere. I even fell through solid walls a few times. I can say good things about the art style of this game, it's vibrant, pretty to look at & a gothic sort of cute. It's pretty much ruined by the camera motions & animation style they used in this game; very bland, lifeless & marionette-like. Plenty of other games pull off a 2-D world with life & emotion, why didn't this game? Seriously, save your money. Maybe buy this as a gag gift for a friend if it's on sale for $1. Try the buggy demo, but do -not- pay money for this disappointing and unfinished fragment of a game.

This game is a love letter to every wannabe game designer who's played Mario and completely missed what makes it such a brilliant game. The jump physics are floaty and hard to control. The camera is sticky and often forces you into leaps of faith. Platforms are arranged with no rhyme or reason, and it's often visually ambiguous where you can stand and where you can't. Enemy AI makes no sense: sometimes swarms of enemies will gleefully dive-bomb you from off screen, and other times the same enemy types will sit perfectly still, ignoring you as you shoot them. You have health, but levels are mostly made up of insta-death pits. The story mocks itself and the game's arbitrary mechanics right from the first level. Even more embarrassingly, the first thing you see in the game is the fact that two-thirds of the game's content (the second and third acts) are listed as "Coming soon!", despite the game having been released seven years ago (as I write this). It doesn't matter what price point this game is offered at, there is no enjoyment to be had here.

This game is just plain awful. I really don't recommend this game. It's basically unfished it even has levels in the games code that were never used. The problem with this game is that they sold this with the promise of more content in the future. Then completely backed out and left this game unfished. There are actually menu options for these chapters and they're just blank. Essentially Luc Bernard sold us a game in beta and never finished it. Imagine buying a game in early access to then have the developer announce they weren't going to finish the game and just left you all with a buggy beta mess. Of course you ask: "But what of the content that is in the game?" It's... average at best. The level design is not interesting at all and all levels are just "find 3 gems and get to the exit." If that sounds boring it's because it is. There is no story in this game save for some scrolling of text and then some poorly written, and unfunny banter between the two main characters in the game. I spoke to Luc Bernard about this before in the past, when his game had just been release and he claimed that the game was going to have a deeper story but his collegue thought it was "too cheesy" and so they dropped it. Oh wonderful. The combat is mostly just shooting some rather bland enemies with boring designs and poorly coded AI. Hell there is a robot bird enemy in this game that will stop chasing you or attacking you if you move past his "activation point." I hear what you're saying: "But this game is just so gosh damn beautiful." Absolutely. Excluding the poor monster design Luc Bernard has done some rather pretty artwork. But it's all ruined by the awful sprites. The beautiful mind that is Luc Bernard chose to stick with ragdoll physics instead of actual animation. Oh speaking of physics! Do you like falling damage in your 2D side scrolling platform games? Because Eternity's Child has it. So to sum up. -Painfully average level designs -Below average gameplay -Mixed presentation -Unfinished game Is it worth it for the price? No. Absolutely not. Don't even give this man money because he doesn't deserve it. Use your money to buy a better game on Steam. Because there are loads more better indie platformers and other games.

If you're a video game historian I'd like to direct you to this game because it was unquestionably the first "early access" scam game on Steam, long before early access was even a thing. Not only is it genuinely just an awful game with painfully bad controls and levels that feel like they were designed completely at random with zero playtesting, but we were promised that this was the first chapter out of three, and that the game would be updated with the next two totally free of charge. Guess what never happened? This game is not worth a single penny. This is a not a "so bad that it's good" game. You will not find anything about it ridiculous or amusing. At best you will be bored, but more likely you will be frustrated. Do not buy this game under any circumstances.

[h1]Summary[/h1] Eternity's Child is an unfinished platformer with janky controls. Don't buy it (I usually write longer reviews, but there literally is nothing more to say about this "game"). [h1]Pros and cons[/h1] +/- Art style +/- Music and sound - Unfinished and abandoned game - Clunky controls, floaty jumping, imprecise movement - Flimsy, incomprehensible story - Bad level design (you often don't see where you're supposed to go, so you have to rely on leaps of faith, causing many insta-deaths) - Bad enemy design (often starting to fire at you from somewhere off-screen, appearing out of nowhere, or just sitting there for you to do some target practice) [h1]Verdict[/h1] Don't buy this.

I was probably one of the people who hated this when it came out, but I replayed it today and... Sure it's a bit janky, but I seriously can't fathom how this game got to be one of the most hated games of it's time. Eternity's Child biggest mistake was being one of the first indie games on Steam, nothing else.

Thought this was going to be a quick 100% achievement game seeing that there is only four achievements. Man, was I wrong. Even though the graphics are cute, the controls are absolutely terrible.

Years after purchasing it, I still feel burned by this game. Don't let the fabulous artwork fool you, this game will bore you, infuriate you, or both, depending on your patience level. Also, if you're like and thought the story sounded intriguing, know that it's barely present and features deeply pretentuous, unengaging writing that will have you ignoring it pretty rapidly. It's rare to see an indie game this disastrous actually get released. What's galling is that with a lot of polish it could have been something special, but it feels like the designers ran out of time, money, or patience and just threw it into the marketplace. No matter what you're looking for, this game will disappoint you.

Wow, they actually left this game unfinished and cut their losses. It's not nearly as bad as most negative reviews state, but it is -pretty- bad. And, you know, incomplete, meaning there's a bunch of unbalanced levels and an unsatisfactory ending.

Well, it is a pretty game. Sure do wish I could see more of it. Unfortunately, the cursor that is used for shooting on the only available level does not respond to the mouse movements; it merely jitters about while the character moves back and forth. I dig the painted, whimsical art style. This should not be for sale anymore. It's been out since 2008, and hasn't had any fixes (that I'm aware of). I just tried playing it again, to little avail. Fell through platforms and couldn't hit much with the shoot-wherever-lady. Eternity's Child is truly broken, and could not only use a re-visiting by the developer, but it probably needs to be taken down entirely from this and any other store. I can't believe the $4.99 price tag on it. I highly recommend you don't, either.