Premium mobile games related to PC games generate a lot of hype. This is largely true of Very Little Nightmares, the mobile prequel to Little Nightmares, which was released for PC and consoles back in 2017. Reviews of it are rather mixed. While the PC version won over millions of hearts, both professional and amateur gamers alike, something went wrong with the mobile version.
Plausible puzzles
Very Little Nightmares is a portrait mode game. It looks at the environment, solves puzzles and advances a sort of narrative, which is mostly through its setting.
You have to play as a little girl in a yellow cloak trying to escape from a bizarre mansion full of creepy and unnerving scenes. At first glance, it may look like a horror version of Monument Valley. However, Very Little Nightmares is far less abstract with its presentation and puzzles. You have to use keys, climb objects, push crates and activate switches to progress.
There are no mechanics that give you special abilities to move structures around or control light and shadow. Perhaps that’s the point. After all, this is a horror game, and what better way than to make players feel small and powerless?
Death Attempts
As much as the developers tried to create suspense, or at least ground their world, they didn’t really succeed in creating the proper atmosphere. Horror is hard to convey properly, and even harder to try and evoke on a six-inch screen. Very Little Nightmares makes this even harder by tying its scares to a game full of puzzles that regularly forces players to resort to trial and error tactics to get through them.
It’s essentially a puzzle game whose biggest problem is the puzzles themselves. With few exceptions, all the challenges in the game are some combination of weird or frustrating. This only gets worse as further immersion occurs in the game.Quick reactions become increasingly necessary to avoid dying while solving the puzzle.
Mobile Clutter
Very Little Nightmares suffers from not being all that mobile-friendly. Despite being designed specifically for a small screen, this game has clunky touch controls and pathfinding. It also has an inconsistent checkpoint system.
There are also certain scenes that are very dark, and at least one sound puzzle that can cause problems if played in a bright location or with the sound off, or both. So the gameplay experience leaves a lot to be desired, especially when one has had time to enjoy the computer version of the game.
The Bottom Line
Apart from the beautiful art, there’s not much to enjoy about Very Little Nightmares. From top to bottom, the game feels ill-conceived. It doesn’t work as part horror, puzzle game or mobile experience. This is a pretty big problem when trying to create a horror-themed puzzle game for mobile devices.