TL;DR: Not worth the price. Get it on sale, for really cheap.

Grotesque does not equate to horror. These two adjectives are not mutually exclusive per se, but there is no real merit in making that connection. Yet, so many works reduced to this old stereotype end up being substandard representatives of the horror genre. Little Nightmares is one of them.

Little Nightmares is clearly inspired by Playdead's INSIDE, but cannot compare to INSIDE on any level whether it be graphics, gameplay, or story. INSIDE has a stellar story that's deep, dark, and thought-provoking. Little Nightmares does not offer much, aside from a borderline fantastical setting, devoid of any story or meaning whatsoever. This game is about as scary as playing hide-and-seek, albeit in a whimsical setting, with 'it' being mildly grotesque characters (read: it is not actually scary and the "scares" are graphic only). It is somewhat spooky though, in a funny and childish kind of way, which, I suppose, fulfils its premise of delivering a "tale that will confront you with your childhood fears." The visual style of this game is excellent. Animations are very rough and unpolished, however. Ditto for the death scenes, and it's a shame they were not "inspired" by the gruesome deaths from INSIDE or LIMBO on that front, especially given that they actually made a trailer called "9 Deaths of Six" showcasing said death scenes. They would not have had the guts (pun intended) to go *that* far now, would they? In a kids' game? Or, is it?

As far as the protagonist goes, Six's design is uninspired and uncool, in my opinion. She has zero personality and is just a plain yellow raincoat-donning stick figure lookalike with stupid-looking animations; who came up with that? The game is also surprisingly short, with just four main levels. 2.5D platforming forms the core gameplay here and it is poorly implemented and downright frustrating at times due to jankiness and wonky controls, both on keyboard and with an Xbox One controller. The sporadic checkpoints certainly do nothing to help alleviate this issue. If you die after completing a sizeable portion of a level, you must restart from the checkpoint and complete the puzzles again. Six also just casually chills at the checkpoint when you restart, and you have to wait for her to wake up. Combined with the slow movement speed and poor controls, this becomes a chore and gets old really fast. It even felt like the game was trying to compensate for the poor gameplay by having the player die repeatedly under the notion of "git gud." No. The controls are loose and the platforming leaves a lot to be desired. It does not work here, plain and simple.

Sound design is satisfactory at best; nothing spectacular. Some monster sounds seem out of place and render otherwise tense moments less so. The soundtrack did not really do anything for me either. Overall, none of the elements of this game stood out. There's neither quality, nor quantity here. This is an average game, at least in my opinion. I would still recommend it as such, if only because it's weird and quirky. Get it on sale, for really cheap, and don't expect anything worth writing home about.