Platform: PC
Developer: Tarsier Studios
Publisher: Bandai Namco Entertainment
Release Date: April 28th, 2017
Genre: Puzzle, Platformer, Action
Reviewed by Nips
If you are a fan of Stephen King’s It, the critically-acclaimed indie games Limbo, Inside, or Unraveled, or just straight up enjoy a little bit of horror injected into your daily life, then Little Nightmares might just be the game for you. Dark, engaging, and just a little bit scary, Little Nightmares is sure to scratch that atmospheric-indie-game itch.
Little Nightmares is an indie horror title developed by Tarsier Studios, who have previously had their hands involved in the Little Big Planet series. The player takes control of the small and feeble yellow-coated protagonist known as Six (I had to look this up), and it is up to them to lead this hapless hero out of the confines of The Maw (I had to look this up too), a place where strange and gruesome things wait in the shadows to tear him shreds.
Little Nightmares opens as you wake up inside of a giant suitcase, surrounded by dismal concrete walls and a generally foreboding atmosphere; dark, muted colors of black and purple characterize the surroundings while a low hum and the pit-pattering of leaky water pipes punctuate the gloomy soundscape. The only element that contrasts this general atmosphere is the bright yellow raincoat of the protagonist, which reminds me of little Georgie from the It movie more than anything. And, uh, if you don’t know who I’m talking about, don’t bother looking it up. Your life will be much happier that way.
With no way to go but forward, the protagonist known as Six presses onward into the depths of The Maw, a world full of horrors and terrifying nightmares. The controls in Little Nightmares are fairly simple; you can run, jump, grab onto things, climb things, pick things up, and throw them. Alongside all these, Six also has a handy Zippo lighter of sorts that he can use to light the way.
The first thing that stands out about Little Nightmares is just how much effort was put into crafting an immersive and intensely engaging atmosphere. The shadows and lighting bounce realistically over surfaces, creating a gloomy and depressing world that you can really lose yourself in. All of the character and environment models are very distinct, and the world has an almost miniature, toy-like look to it, emphasizing the duality of the game’s title. All the while, ambient noise and creepy sounds punctuate the environment to really drive home the atmosphere.
Similar to Inside, Little Nightmares progresses on a relatively rail-like side-scrolling path as the yellow-coated Six delves deeper into the mysterious Maw. First and foremost, this game acts as a lightweight puzzle experience that utilizes common sense puzzle-solving. Need to get through a window that’s high up? Push a crate over there! No crates around? Then push something over! I’m…I’m simplifying things a bit, but you get the idea; Little Nightmares involves a lot of environmental puzzle-solving where you have to creatively figure out how to get from one side to the other using makeshift platforms and machinery.
As we all know, a puzzle-solving platformer is nothing without a strong backbone of solid level design. And boy, am I impressed by the level design featured in Little Nightmares. First off, everything is huge! It turns out that the protagonist Six has found himself smack in a world of hungry giants, so he has to climb enormous stacks of books, the open drawers to nightstands and dressers, and crawl through the plumbing of The Maw in order to avoid its ravenous residents. One of the challenges of environmental puzzle-solving is in designing the puzzles to that the player isn’t confused about what they can and can’t accomplish in the world. And, for the most part, Little Nightmares pulls its puzzles off in excellent fashion while at the same time avoiding that thing Uncharted does where all the important surfaces are marked white or yellow, or what-have-you. Simply put, the puzzles in this game are pretty satisfying and very intuitive, though I will say that they tend to fall into Inside and Limbo’s pitfall of being just a little too easy.
Another thing that really impresses me about the level design is the sheer amount of detail to it. The developers obviously spent a lot of time to meticulously craft every room in The Maw, and their work shows. Each small detail, be it stacks of food on a far table, handfuls of tools scattered around, or just little odds and ends that one might stow away in a nightstand drawer, has been given a very distinct and almost tactile in-game model that serves to heighten Little Nighmares’ atmosphere and texture.
On top of that, there isn’t a lot of wasted space in this game; almost every room has something new to teach the player, and they all seem to serve a function that has nothing to do with their utility in the game. Any gamer alive can think of games that brazenly include objects and scenery that are obviously intended serve the player’s purpose, regardless of whether these objects make sense in a real world setting. Little Nightmares does away with all of that, achieving a near perfect marriage of atmosphere and level design that you rarely see, because…well…it’s really hard.
Okay, so we’ve talked about the stellar atmosphere, we’ve talked about the superb puzzles, and we’ve talked about the excellent level design. Now, *inhales* let’s talk about the action. And, more specifically, let’s talk about the enemies. As I mentioned earlier, Little Nightmares drops the player into a mysterious vessel known as The Maw, surrounded by giants and other nasty things that want to eat them and tear them to shreds. These guys are straight up spooky, man! They breathe all heavy and labored like asthmatics with heart disease, and they’ll chase the shit out of you if they see or hear you, so you gotta hide quick if you get spotted or else your ass is a grease spot.
On top of all this, the enemy models are really good looking and fleshed out, and their animations are excellently scripted for how large they are, so kudos to the development team. These guys are just creepy. Not that there’s necessarily been a market for it, but Little Nightmares comes the closest to how Jack from Jack and the Beanstalk probably felt as he sneaked through the giant’s furniture and straight up stole his shit knowing full well that he could be a meal by the end of the day. These guys are truly frightening, and their size, reach, and strength just make you feel that much smaller and feebler.
Just like Inside (I’m comparing this game to Inside a lot), the story that’s featured in Little Nightmares is completely non-linguistic, conveyed through the sheer gameplay and the setting rather than through cut scenes, dialogue, or written blocks of text. Anything the player learns about this world, they glean for themselves based on the way the levels are laid out or based on the things that happen directly to them. Thus, that marriage that I talked about earlier, the marriage between atmosphere and level design, gets a third partner, resulting in a rather impressive, polyamorous blend of elements that all work together, serving only to heighten the game’s themes.
On that note, it’s easy to tell that Little Nightmares only had a couple of ideas that it wanted to convey to the player, so it had lot of time to develop these themes and come out on the other side with a rather concrete and coherent idea. You can compare this to Inside, which was a similar game in a lot of ways, but it seemed like Inside had so many ideas it wanted to tell the player that none of them really ended up sticking the landing. Little Nightmares, on the other hand, handles its story rather gracefully in my opinion.
Nips’ Complaint Corner
Welcome to the fifth ever edition ever of of Nips’s Complaint Corner, a place where I air out all my grievances with Little Nightmares, back-to-back-to back! Settle in and enjoy some unadulterated game design rants as I explore everything the developers could have done better.
To start off, the very first thing that I noticed is that the control buttons aren’t immediately taught to the player. They just make you guess. Inside did this same shit. Why? Immersion? I just don’t buy into the idea that literally not teaching the game to the player somehow makes the game more immersive. To be fair, the game will show you a little button prompt if you get stuck in an area for a minute or two, but as the first time the prompt is shown? You’re really gonna let the player fly blind and think they’re doing something wrong for a while, then tell them how to play your game?
While we’re on interface issues, it’s not always completely clear which doors and objects you can and can’t interact with. For example, the game teaches you early on that you can pull drawers open and drag boxes around, so you can imagine my surprise when I found un-openable drawers for no reason, or found objects that just wouldn’t budge, despite them looking exactly like the other items I was dragging around a minute ago. More clarity, or simply letting the player just play a bit more with the systems would have been a lot more interesting.
The lighter is a neat little tool, but it is literally only used so you can see better. Why are there no puzzles that involve the lighter? Why no puzzles with rope you can burn, or puzzles in really dark areas with enemies around? This seems like a hugely wasted opportunity to me, because as it stands the lighter is mostly cosmetic. Though, I will say that the added mechanic where enemies are more likely to spot you while your lighter is lit is a nice touch.
Little Nightmares is an indie horror game after the style of Limbo and Inside. It weaves platforming elements with puzzle mechanics to present the player with a moderate amount of challenge, though I must admit that the majority of puzzles are rather trivial. But, where this game really succeeds is in the masterful marriage between the atmosphere, the level design, and the story, all working to build upon each other to offer the player an experience that is immersive, stressful, and communicative, exploring ideas surrounding industrialism and greed in a way not all too dissimilar from games like Inside and Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee. Though it only took me just over three hours to complete, I had a wild time with this game and would recommend it to any fan of atmospheric indie games.
Nerd Rating: 8 out of 10
