Little Nightmares

Lacklustre puzzling, fiddly controls and a brief runtime disappoint slightly. [June 2017, p.90]

If you admire adventure tourism, you are in the right place. This, by design imperfect game, keeps you charmed with its own atmosphere.

Frequently surprising, intense, and always sublime.

Little Nightmares is like a fledgling chef's interpretation of a gourmet dish: it looks the part and hits the spot – but it won't live too long in the memory once you've greedily gobbled it up. Outstanding presentation is paired with some forgettable puzzles and a slightly fragmented fiction, leaving a feast that will satisfy without ever really forcing your tastebuds to explode.

Little Nightmare appears to have a double meaning. On one hand, the gameplay is a nightmare, regularly testing your patience and will to push forward. On the other, the atmosphere and audio design prove terrifying in a way that horror fiends will admire. There's an equal amount of qualities to like and dislike, but when it comes down to it Little Nightmares succeeds at delivering on its promise of being an interesting horror game unlike anything else.

Inventive and disturbing puzzler with beautiful environments, Little Nightmares is well worth a look for fans of the genre looking for something a little different.

Little Nightmares does not try to appeal to everybody, and that makes it a better game. This is a game with apparent strength and weaknesses, but you can always tell that it is a game made of a group of people with a strong and clear vision for a defined audience.

It has some unfortunate gameplay failings, but in terms of disturbing atmosphere and surprisingly serious subject matter this is one of the best horror games of the year.

Little Nightmares is visually stunning, but it does not really come up with very interesting puzzles, and it ends a little quickly, leaving us a bit hungry.

Little Nightmares is just blowing smoke. A wonderful and charming smoke, since the mood and the aesthetics are awesome, both for style and inspiration, but the gameplay lacks depth and the game is nothing more than a far-too-simple and linear platformer with some stealth and puzzle elements.

Little Nightmares achieves a lot with atmosphere, but doesn’t achieve much as an interactive experience. What it does could be done to the same effect as a film, painting, or even a creepy children’s book. It looks like a Wallace and Gromit story that went awry with depressants, which so happens to be its best feature. I wouldn’t say Little Nightmares is pointless as a game – if it wasn’t one, I may have never experienced it. But I would say it’s atmospheric goals are underutilised in a medium privileged with active participation.