Little Nightmares - Review

Little Nightmares - Review

Review for Little Nightmares. Game for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 28/04/2017

There are eerie rooms in the middle of the ocean, but it's not Bioshock; there's a misshapen butcher chasing a defenseless young girl, but it's not Haunting Ground; there are also scary monsters born from your nightmares, but it's not The Evil Within. It's Little Nightmares, a combination of all the emotions of the titles just mentioned, served in the form of a platform full of environmental puzzles and childish fears.



It's a bit like Little Big Planet has fallen asleep and is having a nightmare that is as terrifying as it is fascinating. Intrigued? You should be.

Little Nightmares - Review

The ship of sin

The vessel called "The Maw" appears once a year, always in a different place. Inside, guests embody the worst deadly sins such as lust, gluttony, pride, having no qualms about imprisoning and eating small defenseless children that they keep locked up in the lower levels of the boat.

Little Nightmares tells the story from the point of view of the little e (apparently) defenseless Six, and it does it as only the best indie productions can do: the protagonist does not speak and never shows her face, still managing to create with the player an empathy that immediately brings to mind Limbo, so much the atmosphere fascinates and captivates. The game of Tarsier Studios it is a product that drags you into a spiral of horror by emphasizing every little detail, reminding us adults how a child's nightmare can be so terrifying that it shakes bones.


During the adventure there will also be a way to change the point of view on Six, which from tiny and defenseless will in turn become a predator, revealing the dark side hidden behind the mask of a small victim. We won't tell you more so as not to spoil the surprise, but rest assured that after the first twist you will be led to play Little Nightmares in one breath and you will not detach yourself from the screen until you have reached the credits.


Little Nightmares - Review

Small steps towards freedom

Little Nightmares is mostly made up of physics-based environmental puzzles: little Six will have a hard life because of her stature, definitely unsuitable for the environments in which she will find herself wandering. While on the one hand this dimensional handicap will force you to rack your brains even just to reach the handle of a normal door, on the other hand it will allow you to climb and crawl in otherwise unreachable areas, to escape enemies or to discover new areas in which to perform. the actions needed to solve the puzzles that will unlock the way to the next room.

The settings and puzzles will not fail to offer splatter situations that deliberately clash with the petite protagonist and with the cartoon style: just one mistake and the enemy will grab you, leading the adventure to certain death. Six's tasks will be: stay hidden, find the keys necessary to open closed doors and find ways to weaken and take revenge - sometimes in a decidedly gory way - of those who will hinder it. In this regard, we would like to point out how the fight with the first enemy, a deformed being with very long arms, is also one of the most interesting of the whole adventure: a bit of a shame, since the antagonists met later are unable to give the same sensation. of claustrophobic terror and fight much more easily.


Little Nightmares - Review

Although the actions to be performed in Little Nightmares can be summarized in moving on a two-dimensional plane from room to room, the variety of puzzles is interesting enough to keep the player's attention high, as well as a minimum of depth in some scenarios allows you to climb and develop vertical exploration, increasing the chances of gameplay that in the long run would have risked becoming boring.


And here comes the sore point that saw us forced to lower the rating of a video game that could definitely aspire to the maximum score: Little Nightmares is really too much, too much, too short. We can understand how longevity is calibrated on the inevitable repetition of situations, in such a way as to offer the player a series of all different puzzles and allow him to end the game while still the tension and involvement are high, but despite this during our first run we completed the game in under four hours, with a really pungent bitterness in the mouth.

There is obviously a way to replay the various chapters to find the collectibles and complete the game 100%, but breaking statuettes and lighting lanterns has nothing to do with the emotion that would have given at least an hour of play in a ' additional area. We put our hope in some future DLC, certain of the terrifying quality that would bring with it.

Little Nightmares - Review

The charm of the grotesque

Little Nightmares' graphic style is unique and exquisitely grotesque: the yellow of Six's waxed raincoat deliberately collides with the faded gray of the scenarios, just as the faint flame of the lighter that accompanies the protagonist in the darkest areas has the double function of making exploration more intriguing and emphasizing the atmosphere of danger that hovers beyond where the light ends, leaving the constant doubt of what can be hidden in the shadows.


If you pass a cinematic simile, Tim Burton couldn't have done better: impossible not to notice how the developers freely took their inspiration from the atmospheres of films like A Nightmare Before Christmas and Beetlejuice, arousing that thrill that in the dim light makes even the most harmless and childish of puppets terrifying, in a twisted vision of reality that can only exist in a little girl's nightmares. The Jaws are a gloomy setting worthy of the best Bioshock, with attention to the smallest detail and made splendid by the full HD resolution and the fluid animations of the protagonist, other characters and objects, which follow the fluctuating and hypnotic rhythm of the ocean waves.


In the same way the soundtrack is something unique: minimalist enough to risk overshadowing, but at the same time able to take the stage by helping to terrify a player already kidnapped by the atmosphere of this small masterpiece.

Little Nightmares - Review

Little Nightmares is a little gem of storytelling and gameplay. It is the innocent childish fear made in a video game, the twisted vision of a sinful world by a protagonist who travels a path during the adventure, to demonstrate how even the noblest of souls is corruptible. The experience with Little Big Planet and Teraway Unfolded has certainly made Tarsier Studios a complete team capable of creating masterpieces of this caliber. The only drawback, a longevity not up to expectations, a flaw which we hope will soon be remedied with a DLC or, why not, with a second chapter of the adventures of Six, which we would certainly play all in one breath in a new rich night of nightmares.

► Little Nightmares is a Platform-Puzzle type game developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco for PC, PlayStation 4 and Xbox One, the video game was released on 28/04/2017

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