I Dreamed a Little Nightmare

Little Nightmares is a puzzle adventure game that was developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco in April 2017. The base game that introduced the heroine Six was followed shortly thereafter by the Secrets of the Maw DLC released in July of the same year. Secrets of the Maw introduced a new playable character simply called the kid. Finally, in October of 2025, Little Nightmares: The Enhanced Edition was released. The enhanced edition features the base game, all the previously released DLC, as well as significant technical upgrades like support for 4k displays, ray tracing, and volumetric shadows. While this game technically fits our recent theme of games reviewed in 2025 that didn't release in 2025 - I want to be transparent around the fact that I played the Enhanced Edition. So while it's technically an exception, I think we can all live with it - let's dive in!

Rig, settings, ancillaries...

As always, some quick insight into some things that affect my playthrough and could, likely do, make it subjective. As always, your mileage may vary. My rig specs:

• CPU: AMD Ryzen 7 5700x
• RAM: 32gb Corsair Vengeance DDR4 3600mhz CL18
• Drive: 2TB Crucial P310 SSD NVMe Gen4 PCIe
• GPU: Gigabyte RX9070 OC Edition (hard flashed with 9070XT BIOS)
• 1440p 21:9 Ultrawide non-oled monitor w/ HDR
• Game purchased on Steam sale for $3.09

It's worth noting that I set all graphics to Ultra and enabled Ray Tracing and, I will not lie to you, this really pushed my system hard. I ended up opting to install Optiscaler into the game files and used the DLSS option to inject FSR4 (my 9000 series AMD GPU support RDNA4). This combined with my recent CH341A hardware flash of 9070XT bios onto my 9070 GPU allowed me to achieve around 70-85fps at 1440p. My card pulled 330-345w consistently and my fan curve was maxed as my GPU utilization hit 99%. I also run a -75mv undervolt which I find to be stable with my silicon. All that said, my experience was good with very few stutters and no crashes. Lastly, I'll just say that if I had one wish, it'd be that I had a proper OLED monitor for this game. I can only imagine how gorgeous this game would look on an OLED.

Well...this is terrifying

I have to admit, I was absolutely DYING to play Little Nightmares. It's appeared on so many lists of great games and I was overly aware that I had missed this gem when it came out. I had high expectations for this game and that is usually bad for me. I absolutely tend to hype up a game in my head and then, when it doesn't deliver, I end up feeling confused as to whether the game was really not that good, or did I just place too high an expectation on it. I happy to say that Little Nightmares lived up to my hype and went well beyond my hopes. The game is utterly creepy and fantastically unsettling in all the right ways. As we begin the game we are offered the chance to choose between Six and the Kid. I choose Six first as she is the iconic character you'll see in most of the art for Little Nightmares. Six is a small girl in yellow raincoat with the hood up. She is small. She is vulnerable. She appears frail and unsteady. Indeed, in many scenes and scenarios you'll be wishing she didn't stumble so much or that she could move faster. But all these finely tuned animations like awkwardly balancing on overhead piping, and laboriously scrambling up stacked boxes or bookshelves serve to endear us to the herione that is Six.

I couldn't help but feel an instant connection to Six. I wanted to do everything I could to get this little girl out of this terrifying nightmare. And hoo boy is it terrifying.

The art design of Little Nightmares is superb. The game progresses as we move Six through rooms in what we eventually find out is a large ship. Each room is wonderfully detailed with aged and disheveled furnishings. Some rooms may contain beds and side tables, while others appear more industrial with steam pipes and valves. Others still, frightfully, contain children's toys like blocks, teeter totters, and swings. All these details are rendered in a very unique style that is dark, exaggerated, understated, and fantastical all at once somehow. I say this a lot about well done game environments, but you can feel the rooms you traverse in Little Nightmares. They are tangible. They are disturbing and dusty. They are dark and dreadful. One room could simply have us removing a few boards to progress, nothing of real note in the room. Another could have a body hanging from the ceiling and require us to find a lever. Each new room in Little Nightmares is an unknown, and in that sense, always terrifying. It could turn out to be fairly empty - or it could turn out that there's a distorted monster hiding in the shadows.

When in doubt...RUN

The gameplay in Little Nightmares, like the art style, is BEYOND amazing. We guide Six through the Maw (the large boat we're seemingly trapped on) and navigate the various rooms that wind and careen through the ship like a nonsensical maze created by a psychopath. Collectively the rooms combine to create chapters in Little Nightmares. And each chapter has a looming, horrifying, monster or boss to defeat. As we move room to room we are solving puzzles, finding keys, looking for objects to move or engage, and genuinely just trying to survive the vast array of obstacles and set pieces designed to kill us. Despite the vast number of rooms, Little Nightmares is able to keep things fresh with engaging puzzles that often require us to climb, duck, backtrack, jump, move quietly, enlist the help of Nomes (cute, adorable, little triangle guys that can be freed from cages and other unfortunate situations throughout the game), and even flood rooms or engage large coal ovens. As I said, there are boss monsters that are often in pursuit of us or that we are quietly sneaking around in the various chapters. These bosses are larger than any of the smaller adversaries we meet in Little Nightmares and as such they are naturally more terrifying. These monsters each have their own distinct abilities that will require you to handle them in different ways. For example, one is blind, but has excellent hearing and smell (and like RIDICULOUSLY large arms). You can imagine that when trying to move through a set piece that features this particular nightmare character, we need to be quiet and stealthy. Getting caught or touched in Little Nightmares is instant death - so there is very little room for error in these encounters.

Little Nightmares really gets you to look around and try to find the best option for escape in any situation. It's not about fighting, it's about survival, and for us and Six, the best options are the ones where we aren't even seen.

Six is equipped with a tiny lighter that can be used to illuminate dark portions of rooms. This is often needed to see small switches or hatches that might have gone unnoticed in the dark. The puzzles, as I mentioned, are very engaging and challenging, but never feel as if they are too abstract. Getting stuck is likely just a byproduct of a lack of information. The game design is also such that certain level mechanics or lighting will often lead you down the right path. The game also has certain sections or set pieces that are energetically cinematic. In some cases, there are no puzzles, no levers, and no hidden hatches. You just need to run as fast as you can and jump to that swinging light fixture before a hungry horde of distended monster people try eat you for dinner. There a several of these sections expertly placed throughout the game that really ratchet up the tension and make for great filmic escape scenes that leave you breathless, scared, exacerbated, and exuberant all at once. Did I mention this game is a gem? Because this game is a GEM.

Wrap Up

Little Nightmares checks so many boxes, hopefully I've made that clear in the previous paragraphs. The game incorporates dark fantasy elements, action and platforming, and genuinely seems to be constructed from the stuff of nightmares we all dreamed about as kids. It's like the devs made some deal with a demon and harvested all the horrors of childhood (and adulthood for that matter) and crammed them into this game. Figures are exaggerated and horrible. Faces are distorted and distended. Arms are too long and legs are too short. Things move too fast and too slow at the same time. And all the while we are this poor, ungainly, awkward, little girl that just wants to escape. I mentioned it earlier, but allow me a bit more time on the character of SIx here. She never speaks. There is no dialogue and there are no voice overs. And still, the way Six walks, the way she emotes, the way she runs and jumps, I couldn't help be feel a strong attachment to her. She is literally trying to escape a nightmare and she seems so ill equipped to do so. But as we progress through the game - we see that there is someting different about Six. She's not quite...okay. There are points through the game where an unmanageable hunger takes over Six. And when this hunger happens, we have to sate it. It's the only way to keep going. No spoilers, but make sure you play as the other character the Kid after you've played Six's story. The whole hunger thing comes full circle, but I digress. And as we keep navigating with Six I came realize something. Six may be a child. Six may be small. Six may be scared. But Six. Is. A. Badass.

By the end of Six's story I was so overwhelmed with the outcome and the final few scenes that I was tearing up and clapping at my monitor at the same time.

Six's story affected me in ways I couldn't have conceived. I don't want to spoil anything for those that have yet to play this game - so I'll simply say this; I doubted Six, I shouldn't have. And so I'll wrap with this final thought, nightmares, big and little, are all around us. Will you muster the courage to escape from your little nightmares? Regardless of how you approach your own dark world, I encourage you, nay, I IMPLORE you to get your raincoat, get your lighter, and travel with Six through hers. You will not regret it.

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