Little Nightmares

Little Nightmares from Swedish studio Tarsier Studios places the player in the role of a tiny girl in a yellow raincoat who wakes up inside a giant vessel called The Maw and tries to escape it. The whole world is deliberately oversized, door handles sit at head height, chairs resemble towers, and the ship's inhabitants are grotesque caricatures of adults with unnaturally long limbs or masks instead of faces. The camera holds a side view, yet the space is fully three-dimensional, so you also move in depth and must judge distances when jumping and climbing.

The gameplay combines platforming sections, simple item-based puzzles, and above all stealth. Most enemies are unkillable, and the only defense is to hide under a bed, turn off a light, or squeeze through a gap the pursuer's body can't fit into. Tension builds during chases, where a slow, quiet game suddenly turns into a sprint for your life, and a single hesitation means a return to the checkpoint. The playthrough lasts around four hours, and the game never pads it out; every chapter brings a new type of threat as well as new spatial puzzles.

On PlayStation 4 the game benefits above all from its art direction. The ship is lit by warm, oily-looking light sources that contrast with the deep darkness of the corridors, and the materials feel convincingly grimy and greasy. The music works with detuned strings and winds, though elsewhere the soundtrack prefers to stay silent and let the creaking wood and footsteps overhead speak instead. Reviewers praised above all the atmosphere and the game's ability to evoke an unpleasant feeling without resorting to cheap jump scares. The title quickly became a brand and opened the way for a sequel as well as a host of imitators. Its handling of scale contributed to that too, since the game never explains who the giants are or why they behave as they do, and the player must infer everything important from what they glimpse in the background. Today it ranks among the best a PS4 owner can play if they want a one-evening experience, but one that's unforgettable, and together with its later sequel, Little Nightmares created one of the few genuinely new horror franchises of its time.