Fred Wood’s profoundly simplistic (and delightfully sardonic) platformer, Love, comes in three flavors: 2008′s Love Classic, the original release with a couple of dozen levels, some music, and “a whole lot of technical issues”; Love Custom, which is basically a level design toolkit, and the current standard, Love+. That last one has been updated, as of about a month ago. Hey, at least you know now!

I had previously been unaware of this game. (Thanks to Auntie Pixelante for bringing it to my attention.) As snazzy as the game is aesthetically, its real strength — much as with Knytt Stories or Lode Runner — lies in its open design. In this case, the level design is profoundly open; all you need is an image editor.

Love is a splendid argument for minimal design. The entire playfield is only a handful of pixels. You walk, you jump, you set your respawn point (a nice compromise between quicksaves and lives). White objects probably hurt you; other colors probably don’t. That’s it. Yet the jazzy music, the crunchy mechanics, the feisty interface, the droll explanatory text, and the memorable level design paint the game as a classic.