The Girl In The Yellow Raincoat

Imagine a dream, a feverish nightmare to be more exact, where all you have on your back is an old yellow raincoat. You find yourself in a total foreign place where both walls and floors gives an unsettling creaking noise as you move forward. It's cold, moist and around every corner is a new creature that wants to get to you. Imagine that you take cover on a shelf, a high and pretty safe distance from everything that want's you harm, or so you thought. The creature hunting us has meter long arms, with which he feels his way forward until he finally has us in his grasp. Everything becomes black. It's over. Welcome to Little Nightmares.

All-Swedish studio Tarsier Studios has earlier worked on the project Little Big Planet but for the first time, Tarsier Studios is developing their first entirely own produced title, Little Nightmares. With everything from the little figure in the banana-yellow raincoat to the scary cook that looks like he has every skin disease in the world, the spooky, unique atmosphere is something i have started to connect to this game since i first started to lay my eyes on it.

Little Nightmares is dark... very dark.

The little girl in the yellow raincoat is named Six and she finds herself in a very peculiar place called The Maw. An escapee resort far under the water surface where humans come to...no, you should explore this part yourself. Six is determined to escape this unfriendly place, whatever the cost, but on the way she has to solve puzzles with twisted creatures wanting to take her. To her help she has nothing but her legs, arms and her lighter, but the lighter will be very usable, believe me on that.

The Great Atmosphere of The Maw

Little Nightmares is a puzzle-game in the same style as Limbo and Inside, where both mechanics and foremost the atmosphere are almost identical (with emphasis on the atmosphere). You will traverse the universe by climbing, jumping, swinging, running and sneaking. At some locations you will have to find a key to be able to progress, which often requires both cunning and finesse. Many of these sequences requires you to explore and sneak past the diverse enemies, with everything from different looks to size. Every now and then Six gets hungry, and i mean HUNGRY! You'll have to find something edible and as i play the game I notice her appetite becoming, lets say... larger.

You'll need to climb you way to solve many puzzles. Six i very tiny and the large world in which she find herself gives many options to solve puzzles.

One example of enemies that you will meet on your journey is the cook, the one with the weird skin i mentioned earlier. He's standing in his kitchen cooking something exotic and you have to sneak past him every time he turns his back. When i once again needs to pass him at a later date, his movement pattern has completely changed and i have to nervously hide beneath a cabinet before being able to pass unnoticed. Oh and did i also say that the cook has a twin? Well he does, and they like to be in the kitchen at the same time. With large, mega-sharp knives.

These encounters are interesting, mostly because of the setting and characters but the difficulty of the levels leaves something to be desired. And unfortunately this goes for the entire game. Mostly I'm running into a room, figuring out what i need to do, and then move on to the next room. The difficulty really would have need a bit of a "power-up" as it only took me 2 hours before i saw the ending credits rolling in, and then i also had found most of the collectibles in the game.

An Unpolished, Twisted & Delightful Adventure

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The staff in The Maw is what many had described as "special" in terms of appearance.

My biggest problems is in some of the puzzle-sequences where the game want me to traverse over thin wooden planks or iron tubes. The controls would really have benefited from being more precise in this type of game, as i often find myself falling of the thin tubes and planks to die only because of bad controls. Even when jumping and picking up items I can't help myself from feeling it's a bit un-polished. Add to that a storyline that you barely understand or is exciting, and you are left with something that makes you feel some more time should have been put into the details of the gameplay in particular.

Even thou Little Nightmares might not set any world records on the technical aspect of the game, it's still a really stylish design. Tarsier has really done a good job in capturing the feeling of a cold and industrial world, with that lovely nightmarish twist we love. It's dark, which helps to set the tone in an excellent way, especially with the filter that's used that makes everything look extra grainy and dirty.

Alright, just a normal short-legged, long-armed mummy like creature. Nothing weird happening here.

Just like the graphics, the sound is also perfect for the atmosphere. The sound segments are pretty short and discrete, but help immensely to set the mood of the games most sinister parts. The soundtrack offers delightful creaking wooden sounds mixed with gloomy, dripping water and all the characters i meet in this world has a really weird sound when breathing, which adds to the spookiness. I'm also pretty sure i heard one of them fart in one of the most intensive of sequences, so they are not very clean either.

Just as in the game Inside it's the atmosphere that delivers everything in the experience. I don't really need to now who Six is, or why she has a yellow raincoat, why she's in The Maw or why little gnomes are running around everywhere. I get pulled in either if i want to or not and it's certainly an interesting journey to embark on. On my way i get to experience everything from moist cellars, dirty kitchens to dining rooms filled with living candles.

The atmosphere offers a very sad and spooky feeling, but if you've played other horror games Little Nightmares is nothing that will keep you awake at night.

Little Nightmares spellbinds with it's well designed atmosphere and great universe but it doesn't really become as good as it could have been. Not near the masterpiece title Inside. The somewhat clumsy controls that make me die in the most frustrating ways, and the difficulty is way to low adds to my experience feeling incomplete. While this might not be a 10 out of 10 game, in the end it's still one delightful little adventure filled with originality and certainly is worth a second playtrough, especially if you enjoy games like Limbo and Inside.

Sources

http://store.steampowered.com/app/424840/Little_Nightmares/

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cryptoviking (56) · 7 years ago

Great write up. I love the atmospheric lighting and graphics. I'll have to check it out.

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conexus (58) · 7 years ago

Thank you :) Yes it's a very original and cool style, twisted in it's own cool way! I enjoyed the game a lot actually, just to bad about the controls but it's worth checking out just for the atmosphere=)

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herpor (51) · 7 years ago

excellent post

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Little Nightmares - Explore The Depths of The Maw [Game Review]

The Girl In The Yellow Raincoat

The Great Atmosphere of The Maw

An Unpolished, Twisted & Delightful Adventure

Sources