And the ability to regain a sense of composure, to master each room, each puzzle, hooked me. In turn, the game makes us, the player, feel helpless. But I didn’t see a monster so much as a symbol, a never-ending sense of dread toward any authority figure whom we perceive as having more control than us. When a teacher stands in place as her neck careens up and down Victorian bookshelves, they look less like humans and more creations made of clay. Images of innocence - children - snap and shatter as if they are Precious Moments dolls gone rotten, whereas our elders have snake-like necks and moldable faces that reminded me of the exaggeration of Garbage Pail Kids cards. “Little Nightmares 2" turns a place of safety into one of pure antagonism, from both its environment and inhabitants. Yet it’s hard not to to think of such unsettling realities as we crouch in corners, hide in boxes and rush to avoid tight spaces with other children, who want to shout, throw food and fart, but also want to tie us up by our feet and string us from the bathroom ceiling. The schoolyard horrors of “Little Nightmares 2" don’t allude to present-day realities such as our current pandemic or the now ever-present fear of gun violence. This creates a bond, but also telegraphs early to the player that we must move into this foreboding world with conviction rather than tentativeness. She’s not so much giving us a solution but showing us there’s a way forward. This connection between Six and Mono feels like the crowning achievement of “Little Nightmares 2.” There are times when entering a room Six will run toward an object, leap into an elevator or crawl along a wall above a creepy pianist. Or, later, when Mono finds a flashlight, the way Six waves him away when the light catches her eyes. I smiled in pure delight when one early simple puzzle required Mono and Six to jump in time, signaled to the player by Six trying to get us in rhythm. Six is there to help us solve puzzles, but I found that much of the enchanting nature of this scary game relied on the way Six felt less like an artificially intelligent companion and more like an actual collaborator.Īs someone who simply does not like to feel overly tense when consuming media, it was the relationship between the player-controlled protagonist - his name is Mono and he wears a paper bag over his head - and Six that kept bringing me back. While it’s definitely not a requirement to have played the first one to enjoy the sequel - the game traffics in frighteningly fantastical imagery and metaphors rather than plot - we are joined through most of our journey by Six, the yellow-raincoat-sporting little girl from the first game.
We’re not quite alone throughout “Little Nightmares 2.” It recalls the look and tone of foundational storybooks, not to mention horror-movie tropes such as static-filled televisions, but brings just enough touches of recognizable modernity to make it familiar and yet also uncomfortable. It’s frightening and alluring because, as we run and jump amid this mostly side-scrolling platformer, the primary emotion the game evokes is one of anxiety. This is a game that asks us to linger in its creaky, downtrodden locales, to focus on details rather than grand unspeakable terrors. It’s not a fear of evil, per se, but apprehension about the unknown and what lies ahead. “Little Nightmares 2,” like the original, feels rooted in fairy tales rather than gore, violence, grotesqueness or pure jump scares and stealth, tapping into the mix of fear, apprehension and curiousness we feel as children and carry with us into adulthood.
LITTLE NIGHTMARES 2 THE TEACHER SERIES
Of course, the game’s appeal stretches beyond that demographic slice (the first game in the series has sold more than 2 million copies). “Little Nightmares 2" is a horror game for people who don’t necessarily think they like horror games. And then there were moments I turned on all the lights in my apartment, as if surrounding myself in brightness would make it easier to play.īut I mainly want to talk about what I thought were moments of pure beauty and thoughtfulness. I even had to set the controller down once or twice when my nervous hands made it impossible to properly maneuver the slow-moving child protagonist at the heart of the game. I jumped more than a few times while playing “Little Nightmares 2,” frightened by a sudden movement or the scurrying of something in the dark.
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