In Nightmare is the latest horror game from publisher Maximum Games that combines the spooky genre with adventure and puzzle mechanics. Horror is a hard genre to get right as there are so many ways to scare a person, do you fight, do you run away, do you include jumpscares. In Nightmare attempts to scare players with a disturbing storyline and dark imagery.

Focusing on the adventures of a boy named Bill, this game takes him through his bad memories and traumatic experiences in order to wake him up from a long nightmare. Whether it’s because of a divided family, often being bullied at school, to experiencing mental attacks, this is a horror game that gives a deeper perspective on the bad experiences a young child can go through and how he can deal with them.

The premise is quite interesting and has the potential to provide a memorable experience, but unfortunately In Nightmare ended up lacking in a few areas that prevented it from being a truly horrifying experience.

Storyline

As we explained above, the story of In Nightmare will take you on intense adventures through the dreams of a boy named Bill who is trying his best to wake up and get out. The initial opening provides very little clarity on the plot which can be confusing, but as the game progresses you will start to get a clearer picture of the story through various notes and cutscenes in several places.

This is the kind of game that wishes to tell its story less through cutscenes and more through imagery and collecting important documents. These collectibles can also give you access to different routes depending on the type of documents such as diaries, medical reports, or school reports.

Because it affects what ending you obtain, you will be forced to repeat various levels in order to get the necessary documents if you want a certain ending. This adds a bit of replayability to the game, seeking out different documents for different endings.

Playing as Two Characters 

During the course of the game, you can perform actions like running, hiding, jumping, and climbing, like with many other horror games. From the outside, the game seems standard, but there is one mechanism that makes it quite unique, namely how you can play as two different characters at once. Besides the main character Bill, another one who will be his companion is a glowing butterfly named Bikti.

You control Bill with the left analog, while Bikti with the right analog. Bill has the most dominant role in carrying out various tasks, but Bikti is no less important since they can help you navigate. For example, it can allow you to see what’s behind faraway places to find hidden items and routes. If that’s not enough, Bikti has some sort of sonar ability to detect the presence of enemies.

This mechanism can sound quite difficult to master right away, but we immediately found it interesting. It takes an otherwise standard single-player more and makes it more. interesting, especially because you are required to do more action and take advantage of all the available skills. This is especially true during the game’s puzzles and exploration which can be a lot of fun and take heavy advantage of the two character mechanic.

Along the way, you’ll also find cigars and consumable items as well as a kind of deer statue that allows you to strengthen Bill and Bikti. Some of these state upgrades include increasing stamina or special actions allowing Bill to can carry more items.

To increase the intensity of a horror game, there are several closets or special places to hide from enemies. The game, however, already gives some kind of indicator of the enemy’s presence and their distance from your character, so these hiding places are pretty useless and don’t have much of a reason to be in the game.

The True Nightmare

While the gameplay and story are decent, In Nightmare has a number of issues that exacerbate the existing experience and make it more tedious than it needed to be.

First, the game has a poor User Experience. For example, with the UI display, there are three main indicators that you need to pay attention to, namely the Stamina, Dream Essence and Consciousness bars, only the game doesn’t always display these three bars actively so you don’t know about the character’s status. This is made more annoying by the inconvenient slider item because you can’t use it directly without opening the menu and sorting it with the D-Pad.

It doesn’t stop there, the way the game determines the autosave point can be frustrating. It often places your character before the latest story cutscene and does not allow you to skip them.

But of all its shortcomings, the most frustrating is the game’s fixed camera angle which is messy and spoils the comfort of playing.

There are many horror games with this perspective classic Resident Evil and Silent Hill are the most well-known but here’s it’s not executed properly. There are many moments where I couldn’t see the character because he was blocked by objects or too close to the wall. Especially annoying when the game expects you to find an item in this state as well.

The worst part of our experience was the outdoor areas such as forests. There are lots of thick and branching trees which really made it too difficult to see any of the characters or do any exploration at all. This is especially inconvenient when your character is being chased by enemies too. In addition, I played the game on the PlayStation 5 yet the frame rate was still incredibly inconsistent, occasionally dropping when things got too hectic.

In Nightmare

The concept of this horror adventure game is quite unique, unfortunately In Nightmare fails to execute it properly. Controlling Bikti and Bill at the same time is pretty cool, with each character having a specific role to help each other but it’s let down by all the smaller details that make the experience more tedious.

Whether it’s from the bad User Experience, annoying camera, or the performance on the PS5 which is still less than optimal, all of these flaws made our experience more bitter than sweet.

If you’re looking for a new horror experience, this could satisfy you but it’s best to lower your expectations for the nightmare that lies ahead.

In Nightmare is available for PS4 and PS5