REVIEW: Little Nightmares - Tarsier Studios
Release Date: April 28 2017
Available: PC, PS4, XBOX One, Nintendo Switch, ISO, Android.
Genre: Horror, Creepy, Puzzle, Platformer, Adventure, Survival
Review Length: Long (~2.8K words)
Review Spoilers: Major, but not detailed
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Little Nightmares is the first instalment of the Little Nightmares series.
Little Nightmares is set on what seems to be a large boat or underwater barge known as 'The Maw', which your little, yellow-coated, lighter-wielding protagonist, 'Six', weaves and scurries her way through to find a way out after having a nightmare about a beautiful woman in a kimono who is wearing a mask.
'The Maw' consists of different areas that Six has to find her way through by solving puzzles and avoiding warped creatures. The Prison, The Lair, The Kitchen, The Guests Area and The Ladies' Quarters are the areas where the different chapters take place, each coming with their own bosses to sneak by and overcome.
To note, I played through the whole of Little Nightmares with a keyboard and mouse. I'm unsure if it was the keyboard controls, my bad average gaming skills or the game, but I found the controls terribly janky to work with and I found myself dying very stupidly often. Which led to some funny moments, but it did become frustrating at some points. So that's a short note before I get into things so you can see from my POV why I might sound off-putting towards the game. Another thing I might complain about is the camera angles in some areas were a little odd, especially when you crawl from one room to another. But once I got used to it, I like to think I overcame it.
Anyways, the game begins in The Prison, where it seems that other small children are kept in cages, where it is shadowed by a long-armed figure, who is hinted at throughout this chapter.
The first few puzzles in this chapter I found to be confusing, then again I am not the best at puzzles so I did struggle with solutions all throughout this playthrough. A lot of the puzzles didn't have obvious solutions, especially in the darker areas where things might not be as highlighted or as out of place with the environment. There are climbing hints throughout some of the chapters shown by little black handprints and smears, but they seem to be inconsistent.
The first bigger puzzle which I was really feeling dumb after was the electrified gates. I got through the first gate after shutting the power off and was trying to figure out how to get past the second one in the toy room by finding a switch or something. Pretty sure I was stuck for about 10 minutes before figuring out you can go back to the first toilet room and then you just have to keep running after switching off the switch as it turns off both gates, not just the first one - whoops. I also think I did encounter a glitch here where I did switch off the gates, but the first one was still electrified and I died touching it - whoops x2.
During this chapter, there is a side room that shows a camera that hints at a later chapter, which I think is a nice touch but also shows a darker side that someone will always be watching wherever little Six is going.
There are two puzzles that involve a lit-up eye security light that causes our protagonist (and previous escapees) to turn into statues. I enjoyed this concept. I liked how in the second puzzle involving this there is a wheelie bin that moves with the swaying of the barge, to remind you that you are on one still as you might have gotten used to the constantly swaying camera at this point.
When walking into the room with the sleeping children, I did encounter a weird glitch when the door slammed me back out of the room, but then respawned me back into the room before the long-armed man arrived. Not a big deal, just thought it was funny.
Once you escape The Prison, The Lair is the next chapter where you soon find yourself captured by The Janitor (who I didn't know was a janitor until I looked it up and I thought he was some sort of deli man or butcher because what sort of janitor just chops meat?) after a few short puzzles and you must escape the cage he has trapped you in to continue your adventure.
Since The Janitor is blind, any running or creaking floorboards will alert him. I've always enjoyed the idea of blinded characters who can only hear you to find you (such as the Moth Priests from Oblivion) so I did enjoy The Janitor sections a lot. It did take me a few times to figure out that the creaking floorboards did actually trigger him as I thought it was just ambience, but besides that, I enjoyed the first encounter with this character.
After escaping The Janitor in the first section you're dropped into a room full of shoes, and as you shuffle your way from one suitcase platform to another, what has been dubbed the 'Shoe Monster' tries to catch you. Once you pass this area it is never seen again, so just a random encounter, which some might say adds to the creepy. This is another area though where I found the climbing to be odd as trying to get onto the platforms was a struggle and I kept getting caught a few times.
A little bit after the shoe room, you'll spot the room you were originally captured in which I thought was a nice detail that Six is circling around the area and then ends up in an elevator after a short chase with The Janitor. Once out of the elevators, you end up in what seems to be a room with nothing but a box of toys. I was stuck here for a little bit trying to find a way out until I pushed the box around a bit and just fell through the floorboard. I felt like there was zero hinting that that was the solution, but again, I am bad at puzzles.
After another few run-ins with the janitor, trying to create distractions to get by him and continue. You have one last fight with him as you try to escape The Lair through an elevator. A cage stops the elevator doors from fully shutting and as you try to avoid his arms that stick through the gap to capture you, you must yank at the cage bars to finally shut the door and chop off the janitor's arms.
Had another dumb moment during this fight and I thought I was just an 'avoid for a certain amount of time' thing. I was waiting for the cage to collapse and got caught about 3 times before I tried to actually interact with the cage and saw that the bars could be pulled out. Again, zero indication this needed to happen, but I didn't dwell on it too much.
Then began the start of The Kitchen chapter where you encounter a chef character, chopping away at meat in a kitchen. You might have already seen this character already if you looked at the cameras back in The Lair. You make your way to the end of the kitchen to discover a locked door. You then make your way up a shelf and into the kitchen rafters where you end up in a sort of living quarters and discover that there is a second chef asleep in a shared room where you also find a key for the locked door. The Twin Chefs are the bosses you must avoid in this chapter now.
At this point, you may take notice that the people you're up against are actually wearing some sort of skin mask or suits as you can catch glimpses of The Twin Chefs lifting their masks to itch their real faces underneath. This might get you thinking about the lore of the world a bit more and its darker appearances.
Avoiding The Twin Chefs throughout this chapter is easy enough honestly. You might get caught a few times trying to set up the distractions or if they start looking under the tables you're hiding under, but you'd always know when they've discovered you by their monkey-like screeches before chasing you down. In the pot-washing area of The Kitchen, you must switch a lever to change the direction of the meat hooks flow, you then climb the top of the central stack of plates and grab on. Once you've been shaken off the hook the first time, a short chase ensues. I struggled at this chase a few times, as the twin that smashes through the door, knocks over items which were thrown about randomly each time it happens and sometimes hit me which in turn stopped or slowed my running. Then my timing for the final hook catch was off a few times, which caused me to fall to my death - whoops x3
After being shaken off your final hook grab, you then begin Chapter 4 with a glimpse of giant cogs churning and hearing seagulls calling. You gain your first glimpse of the outside of the barge, with its guests piling onto the barge and into The Guest Area.
You then reenter the ship, catching closer-up views of The Guests and the mysterious woman you dreamed about at the beginning of the game. You then find yourself in what seems to be Japanese-styled restaurants or eating areas. With the guests stuffing their faces with mostly raw meats (we love salmonella). You are seen by one of the guests as you go through the rooms, and a small chase begins. The first time I encountered this guest, I was under his table. He threw the table and then proceeded to body slam me, which I then laughed about for 5 minutes before I could proceed to play the game - whoops x4.
Anyways, you then get away and then have to make your way through the top of a table full of The Guests, avoiding their grubby hands. More mini-chases occur with The Guests before you find yourself in living quarters, confronted again by one of The Chef Twins. Smashing the mirror allows you access to the rafters to make your way to the elevator. There are not many puzzles in this chapter, more of avoiding, running and hiding.
Once up the elevator and make your way into the next room, sliding paper screen doors begin to open and what I think is the most terrifying thing I have ever encountered, a mob of The Guests begin to chase you in one big scrambling pile. You get away nearly by swinging over a gap.
You encounter the mysterious lady again getting into an elevator, and once she has left, you enter the same elevator up to the final chapter.
The Lady's Quarters is the final area in the game. I find it one of the most unsettling areas, the ticking clocks, the mysterious singing and just the overall eerie quietness. You follow the sound of the singing upstairs and make your way into a room where The Lady is seen singing in front of a smashed mirror. You sneak your way past her and into a bedroom, where a white vase you can smash is on a bedside table. As soon as you smash this vase to get the key inside, the singing stops. The strong silence really begins to set in.
You head downstairs again to unlock the door, and upon entering, the door slams behind you and a chase with The Lady begins. Once escaped, you find yourself in a room full of the mannequins you have been seeing throughout the area, throwing you off and making you anxious if one of them is her. You run across this room and into a side room with the only unbroken mirror you have seen in the area so far on top of a drawer. Grabbing this mirror and going back into the last room, you glimpse The Lady in the centre of the room and as you approach, she disappears and the final boss begins.
The Lady is easy to defeat, running towards the lights and pointing the mirror in her direction. What really gets you during this fight is your nerves. Trying to figure out where she is coming from next, scrambling to pick up the mirror after dropping it. It was intense. Hands were very sweaty afterwards. The Lady's ghostly face that appears during this battle is really both beautiful and terrifying.
Once defeated, Six makes her way out of the barge.
Throughout the story, you are subjected to your own questioning about Six's true powers. As her hunger pangs lead her to kill a rat, gnome and The Lady then proceeds to absorb some sort of life force from The Guests as she walks out of the barge. This is never really answered in the game as the story concludes with Six shown sitting outside of the barge entrance.
Throughout all the chapters, there are lamps and candles you light, which I thought were being used as checkpoints since a save symbol popped up once you lit them, but apparently, they're just collectables, so I was very confused when I died and ended up nowhere near a lamp, especially if I closed the game and came back later to a point further back than I was.
Little Nightmares is a real mixed bag when it comes to the art directive. I've seen inspiration or comparisons to LIMBO, INSIDE, Coraline and Spirited Away. I personally feel some Alice in Wonder Land and Roald Dahl vibes in some areas, especially with the character designs. I loved the insight through the concept art you can unlock as you go through the game.
The environments really make you feel like a small trapped child just trying to escape. The pan-outs to show off the surroundings really let you take in the vast expansion of The Maw and what else it could have had to offer if our protagonist went a different route.
The soundtrack is similar throughout most of the game, but all the ambient noises and the sounds from characters really make the game unsettling, it doesn't have to rely on the soundtrack too much. The sound design is honestly the real gold in this game. The rumbling and creaking you hear can be felt all throughout the barge. Even the little things such as The Janitor's teeth grinding or Six's coat getting water dripped on it. The developers really went all out with the game's ambience and small sound details.
The Little Nightmares soundtrack can be found on Spotify.
To start, apologies for all the complaining and WAY too long yappin' review.
Anyways, compared to other games that came out in 2017, Little Nightmares felt a little unpolished. I’ll possibly replay the game again with a controller and see if I go a bit better with that, but I feel like a game should be accessible to many forms of play and I just felt DUMB playing the game with these controls at some points, then again, could be more me being actually bad at games than the game. I did watch a couple of different playthroughs on YouTube to see if I was the only one or not. I did see a couple of people struggling in the same areas and having the same thought processes as me, which made me feel a bit better about things, but no one really commented on the controls themselves.
I’ve also seen a few people have conversations online if Little Nightmares is considered an Indie game or not. I personally, very lightly, wouldn’t. I would consider an indie game to be developed by less than 10 people, maybe 15 people max. But Tarsier Studios had about 20+ working on the game at the time, so I would personally hold them to a higher standard, but I also kinda don’t so much since this would be considered their first (I think) fully developed game. And now with about 77 employed (and hiring currently according to their website – so check that out if you’re into it!) I wouldn’t consider them Indie now and wouldn’t consider Little Nightmares II (review soonish?) to be an Indie game either.
Continuing on, the pop-up prompts like to sprint or that you can swing on objects didn't pop up for me the first times they were available [which I saw a few other YouTube play-throughs experience and comment on] only after I failed a few times, which I thought was odd. The game was trying not the be hand-holdy I guess, but I feel like it hindered my experience when first playing the game.
Besides the jank controls, I enjoyed the art directive. I enjoy the disturbing-looking characters and the damp eeriness of the whole environment, even places that are meant to be homely. Knowing you’re on a boat throughout the whole game before you even see the outside of it really hits the helplessness vibes. The art style really makes this game more than anything.
Stroy-wise, you are left clueless throughout the whole thing besides just playing it. You know your goal is to escape, but how did you end up there in the first place? Why do people look the way they do? How do lighters that small exist? I'm going to say that its just all part of 'the vibes'. Being clueless and wandering around in a warped world.
Anyway, I would recommend this game if you enjoy creepy or unsettling directives with little story or if you enjoy puzzle and platformer games. I might not recommend it to people who aren't too familiar with the game and it might not be the best game for a first-time experience, but give it a go if you wish!
I haven't gotten around to playing the 'Secrets of the Maw' DLC yet, but I will soon and might update this to include that review also, or just make a separate post and link to the DLC review here.
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