All Nightmares, Great and Small | LITTLE NIGHTMARES
“I fear not the dark itself, but what may lurk within it…”
There’s always been a part of me that yearns for the type of stories that instill a dark fear deep within, the types that chill you so cold your teeth chatter. Not the ones that jump at you and frighten only for a brief moment before the adrenaline melts away, but the ones that creep unseen, just beyond your peripheral vision, a silent stalker, a lingering shadow, growing closer and closer. To be truthful, I am a bit of a wuss. Horrors don’t work well for a perpetually nervous soul like me, but as I’ve said before, they allow for a depth in storytelling while normal fiction keeps a wide berth. Little Nightmares 1 & 2 are worth the fear I normally turn and run away from. Not only is the story vague and curious, but the creature design, world building, gameplay and ambience all fit like puzzle pieces to create a jarring indie, worthy of being called a horror and so much more.
Screenshot by Akiixart via steamcommunity.com
Spoiler warning:
While the ambience of these games is enough to make this game worth playing, the process of discovering the story for the first time is unreal. Skip to the ☀ to avoid spoilers.
We start Little Nightmares 2 as ‘Mono’, a boy with a paper bag over his head. It’s not clear what his goal is, but we take him on a journey throughout a dark and twisted world, through rotting fields, storming seas and crumbling cities. On the way he meets ‘Six’, a girl in a yellow raincoat – and the protagonist of the first game. Together they avoid creatures warped and grotesque, and a tall thin man that seems to form from TV static itself. When Six is taken by the Thin Man, Mono tries his best to rescue her. As they escape together, Mono reaches for Six’s help, but instead of pulling him to safety, she retracts her hand and leaves him to fall into a dark abyss. Mono lands in a strange room, where he stays until he grows older, and thinner, and stranger. The events of Little Nightmares 1 then follow as Six ends up aboard a giant ship called the Maw full of monstrous ‘guests’ and chilling abominations. As she attempts her escape and avoids being eaten herself, she grows hungrier and hungrier, yearning for a satisfaction that is never fulfilled. She is haunted by The Lady, whom she faces in a final confrontation. As The Lady lays defeated, Six devours her, a meal that finally satisfies her.
☀
Screenshot by Akiixart via steamcommunity.com
For a game with no dialogue, the story is gorgeously rich. It just proves that you don’t need words to build a world that extends far beyond what we see. Theories swirl and bloom and feel right at home with the ambiguity. The ability to interpret is a dial turned up to the maximum. We encounter brilliant and bloodcurdling character designs and not only shiver in response but wonder why they exist, how the world has shaped them into an extension of itself. The game invites us to do so, and we accept with hesitation. If the blatant is horrifying enough, there is no limit to the dread that bleeds along with our imaginations. Even though I deign to think twice before opening my mind to the implications of it all, it’s fun to speculate. I balance on the verge of tears when faced with these pallid, fleshy monsters, and they may wait on the backs of my eyelids to remind me of my fear, but they tickle a satisfaction that smothers the discomfort. They have a home within the nightmares, they are the products of design. But who’s? I don’t particularly want to find out. Curiosity killed the cat, as they say.
Platform games are not my forte (let’s be honest… what even is my forte), so the added depth to a normally sidescrolling format was somewhat disorientating. There were many moments where I led Mono and Six to a gruesome death, but the game is not as punishing as you would expect. There are regular checkpoints, there is no inventory to lose, dodging enemies and solving puzzles does not feel unfair. Challenging- especially with no guidance aside from the occasional hint, but not unfair. In fact, the game is supposed to be a trial and error discovery. You are learning what you are capable of, on the job, like a position you lied on your resume for. Much like the characters, you are thrust into a daunting and scary world with no one to hold your hand, your only company - the pitter patter of your own footsteps echoing in a giant room, and whatever horrors await around the corner. That feeling of loneliness is surrounding and suffocating. There are moments when the silence feels like it’s waiting for you, and moments when the soundscape squirms in your ears. Every aspect of this game works to make you feel small – easier to hide within the folds of this game, but helpless in the grasp of such ghastly creatures.
Screenshot by MrOuiOui via steamcommunity.com
As all good series do, Little Nightmares is consistent with its branding, which is one way to praise the characteristic uneasiness carried through both games, and their promotional material. You know a Little Nightmares lullaby when you hear it. You’d recognise the sweating clay skin of its inhabitants anywhere. You’d be weary of any tiny child with a hooded yellow raincoat or a paper bag over his head. It’s almost as if it’s within its own genre of horror, like the Tim Burton-esque style of strange, while not gaunt and haunted, is instead engorged and sagging. Its ambience is unmatched, and paired with the odd scale differences between the protagonists and the world they traverse, allows the feeling of perpetual wrongness to remain, even with no danger in sight. To be small in a world five times too large, there is no choice but to be intimidated by your surroundings. Even something as simple as a chair becomes frightening as you imagine what sized being could fit comfortably upon it. The genius of the game designers is in this subtle terror. Sure, being chased by an enemy is awful, simply as it is, but just about anyone with half a brain could scare someone that way. To slightly disturb and raise goosebumps however - that’s a sort of art to the abnormal that only the best horror games are able to achieve.
Maybe the world of Little Nightmares is a reflection of our own, just twisted in a way that is loosely unrecognisable. Maybe there’s a hidden message about over consumption, or capitalism, or power. Maybe there is no parallel but the deeply unsettling journey of existence. Whatever you take away from it, Little Nightmares 1&2 are classics despite being against the likes of massive mainstream horrors such as Resident Evil, Silent Hill, Outlast etc. It’s something different from the rest of them, both in look and in feel. It stands tall for such a short experience, and will continue to do so as the series continues.
Tarsier Studios are the masterminds behind Little Nightmares, as well as the Little Big Planet series. It seems they have a thing about being small? Regardless, now is as good a time as any to check out their work here, and keep an eye out for LN3 – releasing later this year.
