REVIEW

Little Nightmares Complete Edition Review

by Martin Kerr, May 30th, 2018

After being released for PS4, Xbox One and PC just over a year ago, Little Nightmares has now made its way to Nintendo’s hybrid console in the form of Little Nightmares Complete Edition. This new edition of the game brings across the complete Little Nightmares experience, providing both the original story mode and the Secret Of The Maw campaign, which was originally released as downloadable content for other platforms.

Two of the things I adore when it comes to video games are horror games and puzzle-based platformers. So, when the original trailer for Little Nightmares was shown by Bandai Namco, my heart began to race and my eyes lit up like jack-o-lanterns. I was in love with the creepy character and level designs, alongside the puzzle and platforming elements. This was all topped off with a visual style that delivered spine tingles and awe in equal measure. It looked tense, almost heart stoppingly tense. Surely Little Nightmares couldn’t deliver this level of tension, chills and engaging puzzle design for an entire campaign? Surely there would come a moment where the veil came off, and I was left feeling a little underwhelmed.

The original story campaign sees you playing as Six, a small girl in a Tintin style yellow rain coat, spread over six equally terrifying chapters. The levels are disjointed and un-cohesive, with every room being dramatically different, jumping through themes with no rhyme or reason. Under normal circumstances, this would be a negative element in a game’s design flow, but due to Little Nightmares dark dreamscape tones, it seems as natural as it does surreal. A grim macabre styled kitchen, an off-feeling nursery, a prison, and a haunted boat are but a few examples of the settings that Little Nightmares uses as its primary locations. The only consistent thing between the levels is the excellent use of perspective, size and scale. Due to the smaller stature of Six, everyday objects like a chest of drawers are transformed into a bowed and twisted nightmare laden ladder to the unknown.

Little Nightmare’s visuals are not the only thing that aid in delivering throat knotting tension. The sound design of Little Nightmares may just be its greatest weapon in harvesting terror, both in the sounds it does use, and the ones that it doesn’t. The world creeks and groans, giving an almost other worldly living and breathing quality to the environments. Everything scrapes and scratches to the perfect degree. The squeaks and squelches of the smaller foes sound unclean and repulsive. These hair-raising nuances feel like they rip through the vast wealth of silence, and that is why it is so effective. Little Nightmares isn’t afraid to leave you alone with silence. In fact, it relishes it, knowing that the fear of anticipation is usually just as effective than the fear of confrontation. More often than not, Little Nightmares soundtrack only consists of your own uneasy breathing. This adds to the sense of dread, and the lingering elements of hopelessness that the game is built upon.

This void of sound makes every piece of audio that does play have twice as much impact than normal. Any noises that the player will come across in the game would feel me with dread, and flashbacks of watching a hopeless Six meeting her untimely demise combined with making my palms sweat and heart rate slowly climb. This is where Little Nightmares is clever, as it knows that once a fear has been conquered it ceases to be a fear, because nightmares can only live if you give them life. Little Nightmares never really plays the trick twice, taking you out of your comfort zone at every turn. As with the sound and visuals of Little Nightmares, the gameplay is always one step away from what you expect. This results in leaving the player in a constant state of limbo that is familiar enough to be understood, but off beat enough that you never feel safe until the game’s conclusion.

Safety is something that Little Nightmares never really offers. At times, there are moments where you are feel at ease, but there are never moments where you feel free from imminent danger. To be able to see what is around you, Six must light a light. Doing this not only tells you where things are around you, but also informs the creatures around you of your existence. On more moments than I care to admit, the sound of my light firing up only to be drowned out my own yelping, hoping that ‘it’ didn’t see me. Little Nightmares greatest success is that it makes you fear the only thing that resembles comfort that you have. The light no longer offers a reliable warm glow, but instead becomes a confirmation of your worst suspicions that your only friend is often your worst enemy.

For all it’s fantastic use of sound, visuals, lighting and level design, Little Nightmares is not a perfect experience. My only true gripe is that for a game where you die a lot, and you certainly will, the loading times can range from disheartening to downright infuriating. This is not a Nintendo Switch specific problem, as most of the console versions of the game suffer from this issue. For a game where you are going to die a lot, again you will, Little Nightmares has a check point system can be fairly brutal. Many times, I found myself sighing as I realised that the checkpoint system was never going to be my friend, forcing me to play large sections of the game all over again.

Little Nightmares lives up to its name wonderfully as a clever, compact, tension drenched gem that doesn’t outstay its welcome. For those players who are seeking a more up-tempo horror experience, this may not be exciting enough for you to appreciate. For anyone that have enjoyed other puzzle platformers that are steeped in thematically dark tones such as PlayDead Studio’s stellar Limbo or Inside, this is a game that you will definitely want to experience on your Nintendo Switch.