From the moment you start up Little Nightmares, you will be uneasy. The haunting visuals of it’s world will pull you in, the background noises The Maw will put you on edge and the sense of scale will keep you feeling off balance. There is a lot to be said for gameplay over story telling, and Little Nightmares embraces this idea wholeheartedly, even if it does stumble occasionally.

You play as Six, a little girl that must escape The Maw, a strange underwater resort filled with twisted inhabitants and nightmarish locations. You are never told that you must escape, or even why but the game communicates the message clearly without traditional story telling devices. There is no explicitly delivered narrative in Little Nightmares, instead you are left to intuit vague narrative snippits from locations, events and individuals that you encounter. Who is Six? What is happening in the Maw? These questions will follow you through the somewhat brief campaign, and you will probably be left with even more questions after the game’s thought provoking ending.

In terms of gameplay, Little Nightmares is a puzzle platformer at heart. Indeed, many of it’s ideas are nothing new. Instead, it’s the visual style and the ever shifting sense of scale in the game that make it special. Early on you will encounter the Janitor, a twisted creature with tiny legs but incredibly long arms who hunts you via sound and smell. Encounters with him take on a stealth element as you carefully creep around, then toss a cymbal banging toy bear to distract him as you make a mad dash for safety. Later on, you will have to run for your life in escape platforming sequences as you try to get away from The Twins – hideous chefs who wear the skin of other people’s faces as masks.

The macabre, unsettling setting of Little Nightmares is on of it’s strongest points, and I was constantly impressed at how well it ran. I rarely ever experienced any slowdown or graphical issues. The sound design is truly wonderful, with bangs and clanks from the background activities of The Maw keeping you always uneasy. The grunts and squeals that pass for voice acting are nowhere near as overbearing as the much maligned Yooka Laylee gibberish speak, and do an admirable job of conveying emotion into the few scenes where they are present. The anguishes cry of one of the Twins as you dash through a small hole and out of it’s reach is satisfying and simultaneously terrifying.

I enjoyed my time with Little Nightmares immensely. While it doesn’t set any new standards for innovation in gameplay, and it does occasionally punish you in a trial and error sort of way; the game is incredibly striking visually and will have you saying “What in the f**** is going on?!” from the start to finish of it’s story. Just be warned, the game is quite short, easily being beaten in one or two sittings. Still, it’s worth the experience if you have a PC or PS4.

Little Nightmares: 8.5/10

Space colony simulator game Maia has just received a patch that not only teaches your settlers a new skill, it cures them of their door-related short circuiting.

Update 0.61 has given the UI of the game a radical overhaul, as well as introducing the ability for settlers to resuscitate unconscious teammates – although it’s best done by those settlers who have actual medical training over those who do not. Rooms can now be clicked upon for the settings to be shown, with the mini-menu allowing limits such as how much could be stored in a storage room for example, or what can be stored in there. You can also lock down rooms through this menu too. Settlers will also no longer have a little break down if they end up in a doorless room.

Changes have also been made to item placement too, meaning now you’ll always know if your colonists can interact with an item (no more placing something backwards) as well as what path your colonist might take to it. You can also set move orders to let your colonist shift around items to set locations to fix pathing issues if need be.

Lastly the tutorial has been given an overhaul too to make it easier for new players to grasp, as well as adding in features new to the game since the last time the tutorial was looked at. If you want to give the game a look it’s currently 50% off until the 25th, available for $12.49/£8.99 on Steam.

After a few updates, and a little bit of a delay to add in some new features Gun Media have announced that their asymmetrical multiplayer killer survival horror game, Friday the 13th: The Game, will be arriving on Steam the date of May 26th.

For those who haven’t heard of the game yet, it’s basically a bit like Dead By Daylight except based off the popular film franchise. One player will take the role of one of many different incarnations of Jason Voorhees, each with their own strengths and abilities, while the remaining seven players will become the camp counselors Jason must chase and kill, again taken from characters from each of the Friday the 13th films. Counselors need to work together to escape, while Jason just needs to hunt and kill. Simple.

There will be a few different playable maps too; Camp Crystal Lake, Higgins Haven and Packanack Lodge will all be in-game. The different Jasons are taken from Part II, III, VI, VII, VII and IX with their own abilities, and this also goes for the counselors who all have their own skills that make them better at certain things such as repairing items, healing others of building traps. So if you have a good teamwork dynamic going, the counselors might have a decent enough chance to escape and win the game.

The game will be launched on Steam for a retail price of about $40, and there will also be a physical releasewith special limited collector’s edition available too. That comes with a steel-case and art cover. And in single player’s more your style, there will be a free update coming later in the summer that will add that in the form of a campaign mode.