Little Nightmares - Xbox One

You're alone, dwarfed by an environment you don't understand. Things move in the shadows. There's always meat, hanging, resting, lurking in places it perhaps shouldn't be, in shapes that don't quite make sense.

You couldn't ask for a bigger u-turn from Tarsier as far as game content goes. Its previous output has predominantly included charming, cutesy titles like Tearaway and a number of LittleBigPlanet games. Little Nightmares, by contrast, is dark, sinister and unnerving.

Certain elements of the developer's ouvre have been carried over, though. Like Tarsier's previous games, Little Nightmares is a (mostly) sidescrolling platformer with puzzle elements. The environments also have a tactile quality, with occasional spots where you can turn at a right angle into the third dimension adding to the feeling that you really inhabit the game's creepy world.

Little Nightmares borrows a little from Playdead titles Limbo and Inside, both in tone and set-up. You play as Six, a young girl trying to make her way through a world she doesn't understand and, like the other games, there's a pervasive sense of the uncanny, of things being not quite right.

If you're looking for something to make you feel a little unhinged, look no further. more