Synopsis: Experiencing the effects of a broken family and the heartache it brings, a young child escapes into a dark, whimsical dream world created from his memories. In this twisted nightmare, his past trauma manifests as terrifying monsters that seek to trap him here, which sets him on a journey to uncover what truly lies within his mind.

Reviewed on: PS5
Also available for: PS4

Developer: Magic Fish Studio
Publisher: Maximum Games

If you are looking for an in-depth review from someone who has seen the story of In Nightmare through to the finish, this isn’t going to be it. I’m adding this game to the very small list of games I haven’t finished before reviewing. I played half the game before having a bug eat my save file, and my feelings were already middling, so I decided not to play anymore amidst the other things I had to do in my life, especially when I couldn’t be sure the game wouldn’t eat my save again or not. A statement that should sum up my feelings on In Nightmare for you.

I managed to play about four and a half levels of puzzle-solving and mildly creepy scavenging around locations while dodging an assortment of creatures. You play as Bill, a little boy who’s scared deeply by the psychological trauma caused to him in his childhood. This much is evident through notes and flashbacks you’ll come across throughout the game. I didn’t get to solve what Bill’s situation is in the real world, but I assumed he was older, having a terrible dream, and attempting to come to terms with his trauma.

At first, In Nightmare looks and feels like Little Nightmare but with more hide-and-seek gameplay elements, ala Amnesia, Outlast. It’s an isometric game with a nightmare-inspired setting, and creatures and monsters often chase you. In the first couple of levels, it’s a ghostly woman you can hide from in wardrobes and throw objects to trick her off your trail. Later levels feature a tower size creature and one-eye monsters patrolling the streets. Each level is themed after a particular time in Bill’s life. Be that his home, school or an amusement park. Each stores memories that have left scars on Bill’s life, which manifest themselves into nightmarish states, creatures and monsters included.

The game builds everything around those trying to chase you, so it’s essential narratively, and for the game, it remains scary, but after the first level, I stopped being afraid of any of the monsters. This was caused by the repetition of replaying areas after having been caught or growing frustrated at other parts of the game, namely the puzzles, which I’ll come back to in a moment. The pacing and core reason to play In Nightmare is lost; however, the moment the player stops to find a reason to relate to Bill and feel his fear.

I was not too fond of the puzzles in In Nightmare at all. They seem mean with obtuse design, and in general, I feel challenging puzzles in horror games can kill the pacing and any tension developer may have built-in their game. All of this is utterly true for In Nightmare, a game that constantly had me zoning out as I struggled to solve a puzzle. The first case was a classroom of neverending doors, which I managed to find the secret within before finding the basic exit, and the second was a maze of doors in the third level.

Let’s talk about bugs and technical issues. The frame rate is abysmal. It was consistently being ripped in half, which is disgusting when attempting to run or hide from a weird witch-like lady. The solution from the developer is to lower the PS5’s output resolution to 1080p, which isn’t an acceptable answer. But the major bug I encountered happened when I exited the game somewhere amid the third chapter to have an evening meal; when I returned that night and booted up my save file, I loaded back into the prologue level about halfway through. The randomness of picking up the autosave from mid-way through the prologue annoyed me the most with this bug because if it had just corrupted my save, it would be an easy write-off. But for ten minutes, I was convinced I must have missed a way to save the game, but I had not. Instead, the issue was saving and closing the game mid-chapter, a bug that appears to have been fixed in the most recent patch but is still a horrible one to encounter.

There are a bunch of other minor annoyances I have with In Nightmare, including its stilted platforming sections, but at the end of the day, I couldn’t think of anything I wanted to do less with my time than replay what I had played just to beat the game for this review. Nothing either in the gameplay or the story was grabbing my attention to make me want to do that, and if I’m being honest, I was glad it ate my save file and gave me a legit reason not to play it anymore.

(In Nightmare code provided for review)