Little Nightmares is a very creepy puzzle platformer. The ambiance created by the lighting and sound design is excellent, and there's a lot of great environmental storytelling. The controls aren't really explained, which caused me to get stuck a couple times, but the real dealbreaker is the obtuse and infrequent checkpoint system. It's really obnoxious to miss a jump due to the unresponsive controls, then have to sit through a long "waking up" animation three rooms earlier, then walk through the same scripted sequences multiple times. Having such infrequent checkpoints really drives home how clunky the controls feel and greatly diminishes the impact of the environments and setpieces. This game is very successful from a narrative standpoint though, so I was sad to put it down.

Reviewed on Oct 20, 2023


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