Bad save mechanics for the genre + crashes = atmosphere ruined. Is there a good let's play?

[Gamall Wednesday Ida]

[pointless rant ahead]

I really like the game, from a design/atmosphere standpoint, but the save mechanics ruin it for me --- especially now that I have experienced my first crash to desktop and no longer trust the game's stability.

It is unclear when the game actually saves (now I know, the hard way, that lanterns and Nomes don't count as progress saves), and there is a soft checkpointing system (your respawn points if you die are not indicative of what is actually saved), which is imo an abysmally stupid system in any game it appears in and this is is no exception. Any save system that calls attention to *itself* and away from the universe of the game you're playing is bad. Both kinds of saves are too infrequent as well.

I have had to redo the same long puzzle or climbing sections far too many times due to 1° missed jumps (some due to parallax -- the big box at the end of the Prison really appears closer to the camera than it really is, to my eyes at least), 2° quitting the game at what turned out to be the wrong time in its learned opinion, and now 3°, crashing to desktop.

It's not that there is *much* progress lost each time, or that it is "hard" to restore. But I just don't get the thought process of the developers. It's a puzzle game trying to tell an atmospheric story. Redoing a minute-long climb or puzzle is not interesting at all; the value is in the discovery, not the execution. In a combat game like Dark Souls and such, it makes sense to lose quite a bit of progress when you die because there is always room for improvement in the execution --- which is itself the game's primary source of enjoyment --- and no two runs will turn out quite the same. (And in DS, you can quit whenever the hell you like and lose no progress)

Here, it just takes you out of the story, breaks any tension that might have built up. Your thoughts wander to something else while your hands redo the sequence of actions necessary to bring you to the point where you can start playing again. Crashes are terrible for this, of course, but the root of the problem is not even the crashes, it's the save system, which, if it were fit for purpose, would *also* greatly alleviate the impact of crashes.

I'm at this point where I'm still interested in the game's universe and the fate of the protagonist, but no longer have much interest in actually *playing* the game. Instead, I'm writing a wall of text about it while debating whether to uninstall it. What fun.

If I find a good "let's play", I think watching somebody else play this (with most of the failures removed) would be far more enjoyable that actually playing myself. The save mechanics (especially combined with instability) make the game *itself* a bad medium to get immersed in its own universe, which is kind of ironic.

[LWRabbit]

Good post. This is my thought on the game as well. I haven't encountered any instability, but the save system is still terrible.

Really great atmosphere, theme, and I enjoy the puzzles. I DON"T enjoy having to do the same puzzle sections over and over again.

I just game back to this game with the release of Little Nightmares 2, and I suddenly remember why I quit playing Little Nightmares 1 before beating it. The frustration of KNOWING what to do, and failing because of a swaying camera screwing with the depth of a jump at the end of a long section.

And yeah, the frustration of thinking I've saved by lighting a candle or lantern (the auto-save icon even pops up in the corner), then missing a jump next the lantern and being sent ALL the way back to redo the entire climbing section. Which, like you say, doesn't take "too long", but those 45-60 second redos add up quick.

I just don't get it. Some of the auto-save locations are great. Fail to escape a monster or chase sequence and most of the time you are put back in the same room to instantly try again.

The game has this great atmosphere that yes, is ruined when you are forced to repeat the same sections over and over again.

I want to enjoy this game so badly, because the creature design, sound design, character design, level design, puzzles, etc. are wonderful, but I keep running out of steam half-way through the game because I hit a wall where I can't be bothered to redo a section again after a dozen failed attempts that make me redo all the easy stuff to get back to try again.

[Gamall Wednesday Ida]

We seem to be, sadly, in agreement.

As much as I'm sure some (or many?) people are less bothered by it than we are, I struggle to imagine anyone whose experience would be *harmed* by hard saves after every climb or puzzle. This is why I do not understand the rationale -- if there is one -- behind the current system.

There does not seem to be any mod that might address that, either https://www.nexusmods.com/littlenightmares/mods/ .

The only thing I can think of would be to run the game in a virtual machine and using snapshots, which is difficult because this is a 3D, Unreal engine game, which raises issues of GPU passthrough etc. At the end of the day it would be ridiculous overkill and still break immersion.

Originally posted by LWRabbit:

I just game back to this game with the release of Little Nightmares 2,

Have you played it yet? If so, is it any better in that regard?

[LWRabbit]

Originally posted by Gamall Wednesday Ida:

We seem to be, sadly, in agreement.

Originally posted by LWRabbit:

I just game back to this game with the release of Little Nightmares 2,

Have you played it yet? If so, is it any better in that regard?

No, and after some of the professional reviews I just read, I'm not sure I will.

It seems to amplify all the problems that bother you and me. One reviewer said he loved the world, design, and atmosphere, but the gameplay was terrible, and they changed it from stealth horror to "kaizo trial and error".

They added combat, but it is clunky and you still die in one hit.

And the AI companion (Six from this game) is just as terrible as you'd expect having to rely on an AI companion in a video game to be.

In the reviewer's words, the devs "fixed what wasn't broken until it was".

The game is twice as long too, which if the first game is anything to go by is probably a strike against it for you and I.

So disappointing.

[Gamall Wednesday Ida]

That is a bit disheartening to read. Watching a video of someone playing LN2 is what brought me here. The art style was really arresting; inventive, cutesy yet gross, like a mix of, say, Tim Burton and Studio Ghibli,... maybe? I wanted to play that, and decided to start with the first.

I might persevere with LN1 at least, for a bit, in very small bites, every now and then. See how far I make it before I lose interest.

Well, at this point I see little to add to the topic. Thanks for the exchange, and cheers!

[Magic Pumpkin]

I'm spending most of the game astonished at the horrendous checkpoint placements, pretty much ruining the experience, also the crashes don't help things.