The game is very short, only around 4-6 hours depending on how fast you figure out puzzles or fail chase sequences.
There's a lot to explore and many secrets to find, but it's hard to tell which random dark alleyway leads to a secret hat and which random dark alleyway leads to the rest of the story. We had the game lock doors on us to prevent backtracking, even though it wasn't clear that the direction we picked was the way forward. We tried to take side paths to find secrets and only ended up with about 10 posters and 5 hats or-so. It doesn't really encourage exploration other than when it just sort of puts you on the boat and says "have fun!".
However, I think it's a good game. Not 40$ good, not even close, but the price doesn't make it a bad game. My PC is an absolute potato, so it had severe performance issues, but I still made it through to the ending and only really had slideshow moments at the very end when the visuals were turned up to 11. The horror was top notch honestly. Every enemy that chases you down made my stomach churn and if you have a phobia, REAnimal exploits it. Thalassophobia? Got it. Large creatures? You know it. SMALL creatures? Yessir. Empty human skin that slithers across the floor like a puppet with no strings? Sure, whatever, they don't care.
The puzzles were fine. A few were kind of head-scratchy, but both times I had to look up a walkthrough, honestly, me and my friend were just being dumb. They're good and intuitive, you should be able to figure most of them out within 1 death or 0. Chase sequences as well, a few had some ? moments where it was kind of hard to tell where to go, but you learn what the signs are for where to run to pretty fast if you're not familiar with Little Nightmares' method of leading the player to objectives.
Overall, very good. I don't think it's worth full price, because I don't think most games are worth full price these days, but from an OBJECTIVE standpoint? Awesome. Grotesque, nasty story that pulls no punches and socks you right in the gut and fun, interactive gameplay with spooky, dark environments to set good atmosphere. I'll be very excited to see what else the developer of Little Nightmares cooks up next if this is what's to come.
