4.5/5 ★ – Mandy64's review of Little Nightmares Complete Edition.

Scale can convey various things. Importance, depth, or just the size of something. Scale can also be used to produce fear. With Little Nightmares, scale is one aspect of this indie horror game. Like games such as Limbo and Inside, Little Nightmares focuses on the setting, scale and tension to provide an immersive yet short experience. Just a quick note, this review focuses on the main game and does not include any dlc. The game starts with you waking up in a cold, bleak and wet room. You play as Six, a small character who you have no background about at all. Your goal is to explore your environment and discover your purpose and meaning for being where you are. The game focuses on environmental storytelling rather than explaining it directly. This is what makes the game thrive and gives it an ominous and scary feeling. Not really know whats next or what monster you'll encounter. And yes, there are some monsters. Little Nightmares focuses on puzzle platforming for most of the game. Each section of the game introduces you to a new enemy. They are way bigger than you and grotesque. Each enemy has specific abilities or characteristics about them that challenges you to solve puzzles quickly and keep moving. Your first encounter is a blind janitor with extremely long arms. Sure, they cant see you, but make any noise and they will be after you. Their long arms make up for their sight too, so you have to make sure you are well ahead of them if you want to escape alive. Little Nightmares does an excellent job at immersing the player with some smart game design. For example, checkpoints. It can be a real immersion killer when you have to pause a game to be able to save. Sure we have auto checkpoints now but even then its not the best. Little Nightmares lets you know youve passed a checkpoint by ending a scene in an attention seeking way. For example, there are multiple chase scenes in the game that put a lot of tension on the player. As soon as these end, you feel a lot of relief and funny enough have reached a checkpoint. The game distracts you from the fact you are playing a game to keep your experience as immersive as possible. The visuals are the whole reason you should be playing the game. Like I stated before, this game uses environmental storytelling. The scale relative to your character in the game is massive. You are this tiny little being in a massive world. The size gives the feelings of despair and hopelessness. The bleak colors and constant threat of death keep those earlier tones alive and well. Its all amazing, but there can be some downsides to the game unfortunatly. My first problem with the game is the controls. Its not because of the version im plaing either, its universal. There is definetly some stiffness to controlling your character. For as small as they are, you would think they wouldnt control like a ton of bricks. Very sluggish to start and a bit awkward as well. And going back to scale, that can actually be a problem at times. There are sections in the game where you cant really tell where exactly your character is. Youll end up dieing because of this, especially crossing bridges/ narrow planks. My last complaint was that the game was wayyyyyy too short. Now, i didnt go for full 100% completion but i definetly did explore here and there. Overall i only spent about 3 to maybe 4 hours on the game. It was over sooner than i wanted too. With all that said, you need to play Little Nightmares. The flaws are barely anything compared to how much fun i had playing the game. Its a unique experience that you can enjoy in a relatively short amount of time. The games atmosphere, puzzles and scale make the game a fresh and memorable experience.