Games worth discovering

Are you afraid of the dark? Little Nightmares is on mobile, and it's incredibly creepy

454 View2023-12-19

Little Nightmares

9.3

SurvivalHorrorAdventurePuzzleEditors' Choice

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SHOULD I PLAY LITTLE NIGHTMARES ON MOBILE?

Play it, but use a controller if you can. Little Nightmares is a terrific puzzle adventure game, and the mobile version looks fantastic, but the touchscreen controls can be difficult to deal with. Thankfully, the game offers full controller support, so if you’re struggling to push a chair or jump over a large gap, you can switch over to something smoother. Even if you don’t have a controller to play with, this creepy-yet-cozy game is worth a closer look.

TIME PLAYED

I played a little over four hours of Little Nightmares, which was enough time for me to complete the main story. That said, I’ve played through the game before, so I didn’t have to do much puzzle-solving this time around. I also missed plenty of collectibles during my playthrough, and there’s a good amount of content I have yet to see. If you really want to dig in and see everything that Little Nightmares has to offer, it should keep you occupied for several hours more.

WHAT’S AWESOME ABOUT LITTLE NIGHTMARES ON MOBILE?

• It’s dripping with spooky atmosphere. Little Nightmares doesn’t have jump scares, but it does have some incredibly creepy vibes. Most of the game takes place in darkness, and a tiny lighter is your only source of light. There are always terrors lurking just out of sight. Sometimes I’d move my lighter only to realize that I was being followed by a disembodied arm, or that the legs of a corpse were hanging just above me. It’s a perfect game to play in the dark.

• Incredible sound design. Little Nightmares has scary visuals, but what really makes it frightening is its sounds. Sometimes I’d hear the faint sound of footsteps behind me, even when I couldn’t actually see anything on my screen. When I was hiding from monsters, I could hear them breathing heavily as they got closer. Some sections of the game are completely silent, which makes creaking floorboards and other bumps in the night all the more terrifying.

• Constantly evolving gameplay. Even though Little Nightmares is brief, it consistently found ways to switch things up. There were pulse-pounding sequences where I was relentlessly pursued by monstrous creatures, but there were also plenty of quiet moments where I solved environmental puzzles or could search for collectibles.

In addition to offering varied gameplay, Little Nightmares has all kinds of locations to explore. From the Lair, an oppressive spot littered with giant furniture and scattered doll parts to the Guest Area, a waterside eatery filled with gluttonous creatures, every part of the game feels distinctive and has tons of detail. Even though I was occasionally running away from monsters, I wanted to take the time to explore and soak up the scenery.

WHAT SUCKS ABOUT LITTLE NIGHTMARES ON MOBILE?

• The controls are really awkward. Moving around in Little Nightmares is easy enough, but the touch controls aren’t as responsive as they should be. Sometimes, my character just wouldn’t jump or grab something when I told her to, which led to a few untimely deaths. There’s full controller support on both Android and iOS, so it’s possible to avoid these issues, but mobile players shouldn’t have to shell out for a controller to get a proper experience.

• Long load times. The load times in Little Nightmares aren’t unbearable—it never took more than ten seconds for my game to load in—but they can be a huge headache. Failure is part of the game’s design, and if I failed to overcome an obstacle a few times in a row, I had to wait to load in over and over again. Little Nightmares has generous auto-save checkpoints, so it’s not normally punishing, but the load times made some of the more difficult sections of the game feel really frustrating.