I’m glad to see cinematic platformer genre to be slowly picked back up. Unfortunately, however, for every INSIDE we get a dozen Black the Fall or worse. Little Nightmares is in a unique position, due to its DLCs, to be both a great example of the genre, and one of the bad examples.
The main selling point of the game is undeniably the visual style. In the age where it’s hard to surprise anyone with the visuals the art style is becoming more and more important again. And Little Nightmares aims to look like a stop motion animated production. When paused, it is often like looking at a picture of a miniature physical set, and in motion it doesn’t get less believable a lot of the time. The sound design, while not really being on par with the visuals or Playdead’s titles, gets job done and helps to get engrossed in this adventure full of horrifying imagery.
The pacing is, for the most part, also well done. Different scenes, usually focusing on stealth, puzzles and platforming to various degrees, play out with a rather consistent beat almost never outstaying the welcome. The whole game, in fact, took me about 2 hours to complete and even though I haven’t been actually searching for secrets, apparently I’ve discovered about 70% of them in that one go as well. Which is a perfect time for the game – it would’ve started to become boring if it lasted longer, but it might be a bit too short of an experience for the price for some people. In fact, even I’d say that the game, despite some memorable scenes and moments and already mentioned amazing style, isn’t really an essential experience.
Mostly because it does feel like just a collection of really cool interactive imagery. There is some semblance of plot, which seems to start going in the interesting direction of a kindergarten-age frights, but then seems to go in some rather plain and boring direction instead. So it’s just fun to play for the most part and really cool to watch. But it doesn’t leave you with any lasting thoughts when it’s done. In fact, what you’re stuck with is 8 minutes of credits, which, for a game that takes 2 hours to complete, is pretty damn ridiculous.
Oh but there are DLCs as well, of course. The Secrets of the Maw pack with 3 DLCs all of which actually bog the whole experience down. First one feels like an unnecessary retread of the gameplay you’ve just had, second one focuses too much on extremely boring puzzles, some of which are also not clear how to do at times, despite being otherwise easy, and the third one by the end basically becomes a twin stick shooter with terrible aiming controls and reuses a puzzle from Resident Evil 1. The pacing in them is all over the place, the art design is noticeably worse and all the issues of the main game become even more apparent.
Because there are issues that you would probably forgive in the main game, most notable of which is how inconsistent the game controls. For a cinematic platformer with occasional timing puzzles and platforming parts, it’s inexcusable to have controls just misfire during the important part. Not to mention how confusing the choice for the button layout is. I actually fell to my death a few times because after a running jump and a hold I couldn’t remember which of the buttons I should let go now, since none of them (apart from jump on A/X, I suppose) were in the place you’d expect them to be.
If you can grab Little Nightmares on a discount or when it gets a lower price, definitely give it a go. It’s a beautifully made cinematic platformer. Do ignore the DLCs, though, if you value your time and peace of mind.