Limbo and Inside are seminal platformers, offering up tight platforming and controls, tough challenges, and incredible pacing and atmosphere. So it’s no wonder that Playdead would inspire others to try their hand at the style; while there are plenty of examples out there, todays subject is Through the Nightmares from DEV. It successfully nails the challenge aspect, though maybe a little too well at times, and comes with a nice, low-poly but still brilliantly unique visual style.
We play as Sandman as they inhabit children’s nightmares, aiming to fend off the baddies and get them through until morning. What this means for us is some seriously demanding platforming with a few abilities to help us navigate these tricky levels.
Sandman can jump, of course, but a key skill in his repertoire is the ability to shrink at will; pulling the right trigger shrinks him to quarter size, letting us squeeze through gaps or evade projectiles. In addition, we can stomp down to break weak floors. In practice we’re using all of these in a constant flow state of movement, especially in some of the even trickier boss chase stages.
The levels are very nicely designed to make use of Sandman’s abilities, often having us jumping and shrinking, before bunny hopping over obstacles then slamming into a floor to escape a boulder and…well, you get the idea.
As nicely designed as they are, they can be a bitch to clear. Even early on, Through the Nightmares isn’t afraid of throwing us a curveball just as we think we’re comfortable. Suddenly appearing spikes, falling debris, spiders that can leap across the room, and more beyond are all here waiting to kill us, and more often than not will catch us off guard the first handful of times we come across them.
There are also optional collectibles to find, from simple children’s toys to go back in their room to more vital respawn canisters. These let us place them down almost anywhere, letting us skip having to play the whole stage again when we die. But. In another seemingly tauntingly tricky move, they are only good for three respawns, at which point we must start the stage over from scratch. We can at least collect the canister again, but it’s often hidden behind a tricky section itself, so even getting it can be a pain.
Through the Nightmares is the kind of game we need to be prepared for when sitting down to play. I must admit that, despite my love of its inspiration, I struggled to find the groove with this. Too often I found myself dying in ways reminiscent of The Impossible Game, with unseen hazards coming out of nowhere to kill me. Repetition and learning of a level’s hazards feels almost essential, and all too often I hit a brick wall (literally and figuratively) and had to step away.
That’s not to say I can’t see what would make players like Through the Nightmares, but I just have found myself not keen to pick it back up of an evening after a long day of work and, when I do, far too quickly do I put the pad down.
As mentioned up top though, I do like the aesthetic of Through the Nightmares. The low-ploy style visuals are chunky and still detailed enough to convey the nightmares before us, and some of the sections are well laid out in directing our eye where to go when we’re in danger. Other areas struggle a little – I found it hard to read some of the foreground and background differences when everything is dark blue tinged – but for the most part the levels do a good job of keeping us in the loop, even as they beat us into submission.
Conclusion
Fans of tough platformers will revel in Through the Nightmares’ challenge, but I found the difficulty spikes a little too overbearing and far too quickly did I find my attention wandering to the next game.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
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