Little Nightmares Complete Edition

Genre: Puzzle-Platformer

Players: 1

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Review:

(Note: This game is included in Little Nightmares Collection, along with Little Nightmares II)

Little Nightmares is a Puzzle-Platformer originally released on multiple platforms in 2017 and brought to the Nintendo Switch in 2018 complete with its Secrets of the Maw expansion included. This is a game that has you playing as one of two small children as they try to escape a nightmarish prison ship filled with monsters.

One thing this game does incredibly well is its creepy, nightmarish atmosphere, with its grotesque creatures and oppressive environments. In particular, the lighting, shadow, and reflection effects here are very good, and do a great job of selling the rusted, damp surroundings.

The Puzzle-Platforming gameplay here is comparable to the likes of games like Limbo and Inside, with a similar style of puzzles and even similar in the “helpless kid trapped in a world of horrors” sorta’ theme, and while I wouldn’t put the puzzles in this game quite on par with those two, they are nevertheless very good.

Having said that, there are two major flaws to this game that keep this from getting to quite the level of quality of Limbo and Inside. Firstly, this game makes use of 3D gameplay instead of 2D, albeit with a fixed camera. In theory this makes for additional gameplay opportunities, but in practice it makes the Platforming in the game ridiculously frustrating, making it far too easy to miss jumps.

This then leads to the other big issue this game has – loading times. Every time you die in this game, get ready for yet another lengthy loading time, and very likely a decent-size jump back to the last checkpoint. On their own each of these problems would be pretty bad, but when you encounter one and then the other, it makes the entire experience excruciating.

It’s unfortunate too, because if it weren’t for these problems, Little Nightmares would be a superb Puzzle-Platformer with a great creepy atmosphere. And even with these flaws, it may still very well be worth playing for fans of the genre, though less patient players may find that limited patience frustrated by the game.

tl;dr – Little Nightmares is a Puzzle-Platformer that has players taking the role of a young child escaping a nightmarish prison ship filled with grotesque monsters. There’s some really great atmosphere here, and some solid puzzles, but the 3D platforming and fixed camera perspective makes the platforming needlessly frustrating, and the long loading times exacerbate that frustration. Overall it’s still good, but only if you have the patience to work through those flaws.

Grade: B-

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