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The third installment in Mokuzai Studio’s retro platform series, LOVE 3, is set to launch on December 7th on Nintendo Switch and Steam (Windows, Linux, Mac OSX). LOVE 3 is the third in the series after 2014’s LOVE and 2017’s kuso. Mokuzai Studios is helmed by developer Fred Wood (of Vlambeer, Toby Fox’s Deltarune Chapter 2), who has been developing the LOVE series since 2013 while working in the industry, particularly on other indie favorites.
With a minimalist aesthetic evocative of retro titles, LOVE 3 immediately announces itself as an addictive and modern challenge for today’s gamers. You control fiveEight, a lone survivor searching for others in a mechanical, apocalyptic world, through 25 precision platforming levels of cogs, spikes, keys, bumpers, and beyond. What you find in the overlooked corners of these levels will influence fiveEight’s ultimate fate, so make sure to leave no step, switch, or meandering path unturned regardless of the obstacles in your way.
Screenwave Media Games
In case you missed the first two, LOVE is a highly challenging retro platform with forward-thinking mechanics for setting your own checkpoints as you go. It features a precise and difficult level design that will test players familiar with the genre without being purposefully unfair. Though the game is rightfully popular with speedrunners, LOVE 3 will feature quality-of-life settings and ways to experience the platformer, such as adding your own number of lives, toggling slow motion, and additional game modes. Much like the first two in the franchise, LOVE 3 will also feature an evocative and memorable soundtrack by James Bennet, whose work on the previous games brought forward the best of the art style and SFX making them not just a joy to play but to listen to as well.
After spending some time with the demo, I can confidently say LOVE 3 captures all the challenges of the first two while providing more to players and speedrunners alike. As a casual player of the first two games, I’m eager to see what manner of spinning cogs and spike tossing platforming awaits me in the third.
Look for LOVE 3 on December 7th, and be sure to wishlist it on Steam.
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