Little Nightmares is an overhyped milestone in the horror platformer genre and I can see why: with a big publisher like Bandai Namco, cross platform launches, Unreal Engine 4 graphics and an admittedly great art design and chilling ambient sounds, the game feels much bigger than it ends up being.
Because in reality, it is a short adventure only 4 chapters in length (with the comparatively brief fifth chapter just being a final boss fight), with each 45 minute chapter set in a different location and having a different theme, followed by three paid DLCs that have been made as a result of the main game’s brevity. The Enhanced edition offers higher texture resolution, reflections of Six in puddles on the ground, circular waves if she jumps into a puddle, and Six will leave footprints on the floor if her feet are wet.
But returning to the main game, it takes place aboard a ship of sorts, called The Maw, and you play as a little kid in a yellow raincoat called Six, who is a girl. Armed only with a lighter, your job is to, well, keep moving towards the right in this platformer. You have to jump, duck, run, drag objects, hold objects (some of them are keys that need to be found elsewhere in a room to unlock a door), hold and throw objects (e.g. onto elevator call buttons), sneak past monsters and flip switches.
The game offers nothing else, no puzzles to solve or any stopping and thinking required on how to best approach a situation. The only times I got stuck was when the way out was hidden in plain sight (e.g. behind a mirror, or a cage you need to crush) or because I kept failing a chase, which get harder as you progress in the game. The chases are, in fact, the most annoying parts of the game because they eventually require you to avoid obstacles you can’t really see; invisible kill zones you can only guess based on the foes around you. And having to run, do a long jump (yes, there are two types depending on a press, or pressing and holding the jump button) and then grab and hang onto a swinging lantern while being chased and use that lantern to jump over an abyss and land on a platform you need to grab the edge of on the other side, can lead to frequent retries. The game has a checkpoint system, but if you quit the game and restart it, you may find yourself in an earlier checkpoint, having to redo more of the level.
While the game looks great as a tech demo (especially in 2017, when it first came out), and has an artstyle that makes it look like a playable movie, I found the level design of other platformers like Limbo or INSIDE as well as the story they tell, better. And if you want a similar “horror” experience, but with puzzles that actually require some stopping, pausing and thinking, I recommend DARQ.
The Little Nightmares base game can be completed in one, maximum two evenings worth of gameplay and aside from one or two creepy characters you keep thinking about long after you’ve played the game, others like the leeches or the shoe monster don't get more spotlight and the game itself doesn’t have a memorable story. This is where the DLCs come into play: unlike the main game, they have better puzzles and don't have that blind "run towards the right" layout but one that requires some head scratching. I especially found the Hideaway DLC worth getting, as it requires teamwork with the Nomes which I thought was really cute in this otherwise bleak world. But the fact that each of these DLCs that so nicely fill the gaps of the main game's shortcomings, are also only 45 to 60 minutes in length and locked behind a paywall and still don't get discounted properly 9 years after launch, soured my mood. Hence, I rate the base game as a skippable "experience", unless you fully invest into the franchise, in form of the DLCs and the sequels as well.
