I'm the type of person who loves to be scared despite the fact I don't handle my horror very well. I peek between my fingers during movies, I cower in front of books, and video games? Don't get me started. That being said, anything relying heavily on atmosphere alone to scare the player is almost certainly doomed to fail. Parts of the game work to make the player nervous and anticipating what's to come but after the second nightmare it's predictable, you get used to it, and the fact that you know that these are nightmares and don't affect the story in any way kind of makes your actions feel pointless. There's so much build up throughout the game but the pay off feels weak and underwhelming considering what the game play and narrative itself have promised you, and adapting a story into a video game format is difficult but doable provided the source material has something worth being adapted.

Plot
I haven't read the story this game is based off of and after playing the game through I don't think I will. It's basically a trope on it's own at this point: child has nightmares caused by the supernatural, the boogeyman is trying to kidnap the child in their sleep, etc. It works when you can relate to the victim of the story but when you hear the story over and over again you just stop buying it, you've heard it too many times. If there was something new added to the story that made it more terrifying, such as the boogeyman being the child's created coping mechanism for being abused, I would be very impressed but all the characters are one dimensional and never given a chance to be fleshed out. That's not to say that the story is boring, it's actually pretty engaging given that there's so much story and so little action, but it's difficult to suspend disbelief if you can't relate to the victim, and we learn so little about the victim it's almost impossible to get attached. I understand that this isn't the fault of the game developer but the story itself, however in an adaptation it's expected of you to take creative liberties with the characters and there doesn't appear to be any.

Game Play
The atmosphere is chilling, foreboding, and very easy to get used to. Being constantly subjected to the same atmosphere over and over with little to no break just makes it easier for the player to get over their fears and start to anticipate what's to come. Every nightmare starts to feel the same too, despite all of them being vastly different: you, the child, go to sleep. You follow the routes from point a to point b, sometimes there are puzzles, and in the end you wake up. It feels formulaic and less daunting the further into the game you get, and that's really surprising since in horror games shouldn't it be the opposite? By the time you get to the supposedly "most terrifying night" you're vaguely surprised at best and really only playing for the story and not the scares. In a horror game that should never happen.

There are a few things that work, such as the nightmare held in the school and the labyrinth (atmosphere utilized very well with a couple of surprises that actually startled me) and there are a few things that didn't, like the nightmare held inside of what appears to be a structure made entirely of flesh in a white sterilized room (quirky, but scary? Not even remotely.) and spending extended periods of time cut from the game play to look at disembodied heads. They're very creepy but would be more effective if shown less. Plus given that this story has been adapted for a game there definitely should have been more action during the nightmares. A couple of puzzles in the beginning isn't enough to satisfy a player's need to be rewarded for their efforts. To make the constant sleep, a-b, die formula more interesting there could have been more puzzles, or a riddle that needed to be solved for the disembodied head and if you solved it you could advance into more of the nightmare and if you didn't you were eaten, or even a chase scene would have made the nightmares feel more like nightmares and make player immersion into the game much more possible. Another thing to make the atmosphere work to it's intended purpose could be to allow the player to continue controlling the child throughout his day, see how the nightmares are affecting his relationships with his friends and family, show how hard it is on him instead of telling the player how hard it is. That would make going back into a nightmare more engaging to the player and force them to actually care about what this kid is going through.

Overall
Despite how harshly I've critiqued this game, I did enjoy it. It's very flawed and there's room for improvement but it's an intriguing story. You want to know what the monster torturing this child night after night looks like, you want to know why it's so obsessed with this particular kid given that there are 3 other people in the house. The dark atmosphere of the game as a whole really works well with the maps that are more difficult to see as it creates a chilling fear of the unknown and an anticipation of things to come, but the brighter maps are beautiful and having the player face the reality that this is still a nightmare is bizarre but interesting. It's definitely worth at least one play through and I hope the developer will take some of my criticisms to heart in future games.