Throwing you straight into a little nightmare from the outset, involving a creepy masked woman in a kimono shrouded in a heavy fog, Little Nightmares begins as Six wakes up in an open briefcase with little-to-no explanation as to what the story is, or for that matter where you are. Is Six a forgotten member of the Borrowers, or are her surroundings oversized to freakish proportions? Either way, from developer Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco, Little Nightmares is a disorientating experience set in the distressing nightmarish dreamscape of the Maw.
Dressed in a yellow raincoat that pops out against the moody setting, perhaps trading fashion tips with the misfortunate Georgie Denbrough, and armed with only a lighter, Little Nightmares leads you through the depths of the mysterious “Maw” – a gargantuan iron vessel, the purpose of which is kept a secret for you to piece together through its visuals. With your trusty lighter in hand, it’s up to you to guide the diminutive stowaway Six through the labyrinthine maze of this massive ship to her freedom, in search of food to deal with her increasing hunger, lighting candle checkpoints, finding switches, solving puzzles, and dragging objects to reach mechanisms or doors that are often rudely out of reach.
As an atmospheric horror themed puzzle-platformer that may seem reminiscent of the likes of Limbo or Inside, Little Nightmares leaves a haunting impression, heightened by the ships dissonant clanking and groaning, with minimal narration, leaving you in the dark literally and figuratively. The majority of the story is told through the adventure and distorted visuals, leaving much to interpretation. Thanks to the darker nature of the journey and its unexpectedly darker ending, it’ll leave you questioning the purpose of the Maw and why Six was there in the first place long after the credits role.
The open-ended narrative allows its subtle storytelling mechanics to leave you wondering whether you’re traipsing around a nightmare dreamscape, throwing ghastly and gruesome creatures at you in a world that echoes the distorted reality seen in Alice in Wonderland. The inhabitants of the ever-charming Maw are delightfully grotesque, from the Chef Twins and their animal-esque squawks, bloodied aprons and meat-cleavers, to the gluttonous Visitors gorging on an endless feast of meats and wine. But where does this meat come from, you ask? As you progress though the Maw, you might take note of a children’s dormitory, a large meat locker and grinder, and a kitchen. Little Nightmares may be subtle in some ways, but it knows just when to tantalise us with the implication of cannibalism. It just makes it worse when strings of sausages are used as make-shift climbing ropes. There’s no doubt then that the grotesque populace of the Maw will grab your attention – even if that’s because the Janitor felt about with his freakishly long Freddy Kruger arms and found you quivering under the metal frame of a bed.
Speaking of the nightmare inducing inhabitants, with no combat mechanics, Little Nightmares becomes a traumatising game of hide and seek that no-one wants to play, amplifying any feelings of anxiety and dread. This is in part thanks to the claustrophobic spaces you have to run around as much as it is the disturbing plasticine animated dolls used in the design of the Maw’s henchmen. Not to mention the impeccable sound design and the use of lighting, creating the impression that we are trapped in a child’s nightmare: hiding from nightmarish boogeymen in the dark, under a bed, as they hunt for Six and other children trapped in the Maw to eat later.
Making sense of the story, then, relies on the atmosphere built up by the gameplay and its visual and audio cues that make up its Lewis Carol worthy environments. Each chapter takes you through different areas of the Maw, each designed around a different theme, yet consistently filled with oversized rooms and furniture, and unique puzzles. The distorted world seems reminiscent of how set designs used in the likes of 1977s Suspiria were used to create the illusion that the adult actors are children by playing with proportions of basic set features, such as the height of doorhandles, adding an insidious feeling of unease to the atmosphere. However, while design choices like these allow elements of the game to flourish, there are other aspects of Little Nightmares that are – sadly enough – in need of re-examining in the upcoming sequel.
For a game built predominantly around its platforming mechanics, jumping proves to be more than a “little nightmare.” If there’s one thing more terrifying than getting caught by a disproportionate cannibal, it’s making a jump for a platform, only to miss because discerning its distance or position is misleading. While the game takes on a side-view perspective, it’s built around a 3D environment, meaning you have fully explorable rooms with depth and verticality, rather than simply running from left to right. It makes exploration key to expanding on the claustrophobic interior of the Maw, while hiding secrets and puzzles in the background.
However, there are times where this made it hard to judge the distance between platforms or chains that Six has to jump towards and grab. In one room in particular, Six has to scale up a wall and jump to a chain suspending a metal box in the air to climb further: While it looked as though she was lined up perfectly for the jump, it became clear that the chain and box were further in the distance than they seemed, leading to numerous retries to figure out how far off she actually was. This was not helped by stiff, sluggish movement which, while it makes sense considering Six’s slight stature, prove to be frustrating when making precise jumps in a 3D environment. This is also evident in moments when you have to walk across metal pipes without falling, where the sides are just concealed enough that they’re hard to make out while fighting against the controls just to keep Six balanced at the same time.
As such, be prepared to watch Six fall to her death more frequently than you might expect. There are few more frustrating ways to die in a platformer than getting caught because of stiff controls or missing what appear to be easy jumps thanks to poor visibility. It all makes the “Hard to the Core” trophy more infuriating to unlock, requiring players to complete the game in under an hour with no deaths, meaning you would have to perform a perfect run. Unfortunately, doable as it may seem, it only serves to highlight the control issues more than your initial play through of the game…
Speaking of trophies, Little Nightmares includes some optional collectables for all those completionists out there. They have you finding and lighting candles hidden throughout each level, smashing statues of the creepy proprietress – “The Lady” – and, offering a little relief from the dingy horror experience, finding and hugging the paradoxically adorable Gnomes. Or as I refer to them: Baby Pyramid Heads. They can be pretty well hidden as well, emphasising the importance of exploring each room as hatches and gaps can be disguised against dark walls, taking advantage of the 3D environments with some light puzzle-solving. Most of these will likely be found during your first playthrough as well, though no doubt a second run through each chapter will be required. All in all, they’re actually quite fun to hunt for, even if certain rooms are creepy enough for you to want to simple run through to the safety of the next checkpoint or cuddly Gnome.
Whether it’s the anxiety inducing darkness of the surroundings, scuttling Gnomes you are tasked to find and hug, or the horrible, disfigured and frighteningly grotesque inhabitants of the Maw, there’s no doubt the visual and audio design are the highlight of the Little Nightmares experience. It invokes a horror design that recalls a children’s nightmare, letting the Maw stand out as a character of its own, that is at once disarmingly captivating as it is horrifying – á la a Tim Burton gothic horror fever dream. In many ways, its visual style is perhaps most reminiscent of the 2009 stop-motion animated movie Coraline, and many of its characters look like they would belong in a similar style stop-motion film as well.
As charming as Six is, with her impractical bright yellow coat that does little to hide her in the dark, it is without a doubt your encounters with the bosses and other grizzly creatures that, along with the set designs, makes Little Nightmares so distinct and memorable. As mentioned, Six will primarily have to run and hide from the Maws gross inhabitants, and each of these encounters is memorable no thanks to the unsettling ways they move and sound. They include the short, long armed, blind Janitor, who sniffs and feels his way around to find Six; the blubbery, bloody Chef Twins who squawk like agitated birds when they see you; the alluring, yet deeply disturbing masked overseer of the installation, The Lady, with her Medusa powers; and finally, the Visitors, who’s cartoonishly obese forms seek to disgust through their monstrous appetites and gluttonous desires, which happens to include the consumption of small runaway children. A delicacy on this ship, it would seem. With their distasteful and unnerving groaning, clicking and twitching that feel effortlessly unnatural, these encounters transform Little Nightmares… into a big nightmare.
Imagine waking up in pitch black, being shrunk down to the size of your hand, only to be chased around by screeching, disfigured cannibalistic adults, trapped in your own home where the furniture takes on oversized proportions thanks to your new perspective. Sounds like a nightmare ripped straight from your childhood. And like a nightmarish game of hide and seek, Little Nightmares captures the horrifying, yet alluringly exhilarating feeling of hiding and waiting to be found by haunting apparitions. Albeit ones that want to stick you in metal cages to be turned into strings of sausage, roasted in an oven or boiled to be served to a horde of insatiably rapacious, abhorrent diners. It puts you in the position of a child thrown into an alien world they don’t understand by withholding its narrative and themes, leaving it to you to find meaning where possible. In this sense Little Nightmares is as smart as it is horrifying and grotesque, and verges on the endearingly weird and bizarre in a way that seems cinematic, offering an enjoyable horror experience that’s in parts as magical as a trip down a rabbit hole, as it is traumatising and deeply disturbing. Though perhaps the most disturbing aspect is the poor control system that can at times be a hinderance to the experience. With Little Nightmares II due out in early February, hopefully these technical issues are fixed because it looks like it’s bringing back the creepy and ramping the spook factor from Coraline to a Wes Craven haunted house night terror…
