Little Nightmares 2 Is More Crushing Sadness
The original Little Nightmares game had me feeling like a needed a hug afterwards. This one has me needing therapy. So it goes, but damn does it go. What the first Little Nightmares did for greed, this game does for emotional manipulation and abuse. Playing this game was easy but finishing it was brutal. But in a fun, rewarding way. I think what Little Nightmares 2 does so well, even compared to the first game, is capture both the desperation of your characters and the emotional heaviness of what is happening. This game is a much more overtly thematic work than the first and it feels warranted and organic.
As is the nature of a sequel, Little Nightmares 2 is bigger and (often) better at what made the original great. The story telling in Little Nightmares 2 is more upfront and less nebulous. The gameplay is sharper and more expansive. The level design is more adventure coded and less built around the concept of a “horror puzzle.” It’s got a lot of new things for you to enjoy but also a lot of the classic staples of the original. You’re still running, hiding and puzzling, but now there’s cosmetics to collect, brand new environments, new characters (obviously) and a new rogues gallery of villains representing different themes.
Little Nightmares 2 evolves the series signature gameplay loop but also refines it. It’s daring but also smart in it’s risk taking. The things it does feel new but they’re clearly steeped in the same ideological world building. Larger themes are broken down to a level of childhood and then explored symbolically through environmental storytelling and the actions of larger than life villains. The cast here is more diverse and more grounded in real life. Unlike the subtlety and ambiguity of the villains in the first Little Nightmares, this game is pretty front and center with it’s atrocities and what it says about them. It may be less twisted overall, but that twistedness is more harrowing due to it’s greater resemblance to real life.
So what is this game about? Well, it starts with a boy named Mono exiting a television set into a forest. As seen above. From there, he wanders these spooky, trap infested woods to the cabin of a Hunter (our first villain.) After some exploring, Mono finds a girl trapped in the Hunter’s basement and prompt frees her. As it turns out, this girl ends up being…Six. The protagonist from the first Little Nightmares. Minor spoiler there. It also turns out…minor spoiler again…that this game is actually a prequel. This time, instead of being the bold, defiant bad B from the first game, Six is following Mono’s lead. And this isn’t really a good thing, because Mono, despite being more mature, is compulsively driven towards this weird TV signal.
As a matter of fact, Mono has all kinds of TV powers. He can enter TVs. He can manipulate the image of TVs. He seems to have sixth sense of where TVs are. It’s odd and quirky, but it also serves the larger gameplay loop in a way that contributes to a refreshing and unique experience. TVs aren’t the only things Mono can use that weren’t present in the first game. Combat is a more integral part of this game and at times you will have to use axes, bats and shotguns to progress, whether by bashing an enemies skull in or by smashing a door or window.
The level design in Little Nightmares 2 is broader and more varied than the first game. We start in a forest, go to a city, then go to a hospital, a school, more city, etc. It’s not one big cohesive area like the Maw. There are clear delineations between these levels and overall, they serve more as chapters within a book, each with different themes and ideas, as opposed to the more singularly focused design of the first game. Each level offers a nightmarish take on a concept we are all familiar with, unlike the first game, which throws us into a mysterious megastructure we do not understand. We know what a school should look like. The same for a hospital, or apartment or even the forest. There’s so many bear traps in that forest level. It’s just obvious something is wrong and it just gets dicier from there.
Little Nightmares was about greed. Six’s journey (which takes place after this game) to a gluttonous, greedy world ends up turning her into a monster, one craving consumption. Little Nightmares 2 is more about cycles of violence and abuse. And it’s well conveyed at many levels. Both with the places we visit and the interactions between our two protagonists, though one is more subtle than the other. In the School, The Teacher hits her students, causing them to be more violent and unhinged. The Hunter has been killing and stuffing people. To escape the Wilderness (the name of the forest level) we’re gonna have to deal with him. The Doctor has been experimenting on his patients. We’re gonna have to…yeah basically we have to finish these horrific cycles of violence or fall victim to them, which is to say that we arguably fall victim to them either way.
There’s also the sad dynamic between Mono and Six, which is two children trying to desperately survive while remaining children and the younger child (Six) relying on the older child (Mono), even when Mono has bigger goals than worrying about Six. Time and time again, when they make a daring escape and have the opportunity to bail from the Pale City (the primary location of this game), Mono chooses to remain to continue his wild goose chase for the TV signal. You can slowly see the trust between them become frayed and beaten down under the strain of their journey. Six is much younger and more vulnerable in this game. She’s not yet a hardened badass and is, in fact, quite reliant on Mono, which makes Mono’s mid tier decision making more frustrating. Especially because YOU are playing as Mono.
In terms of scares, this game is not quite on the same level as the first game. Like I said earlier, it’s more of an adventure game and I was generally less terrified and more curious/determined. The game as a whole is less overtly dark and frightening, though it’s definitely sad as shit. The Pale City, which is the primary locale of this game (except the first mission, which is The Wilderness), is much more sad than evil like the Maw. It represents lost hopes, dreams, addiction and general mental unwellness. The Maw had this way of feeling evil with very wiggle room for sadness or remorse. The Pale City is much more depressing. Rather than feeling like “Little Big Planet from Hell,” it feels like “Limbo in color.” There’s so much more grey and shadow here. It’s no surprise that sadness surmounts dread in a place like this.
Overall, while I still like the first game better, I was very impressed with this game and the way it executed it’s vision. The first Little Nightmares was so atmosphere and environment driven that a sequel was always going to be a tough balancing act. You could run back the Maw but come on…really? A Six sequel could only happen if you resolved the brilliant ambiguity of the first game’s ending. Instead, they opted for a crafty approach, making a prequel that does heavily connect to the first game but still tells it’s own separate story and has it’s own distinct locale and aesthetics. In a deck of dangerous, redundant and unfaithful cards, they drew a killer hand, one that successfully parlays the gameplay, aesthetics and thematic approaches of the first game into a franchise.
Little Nightmares 2 is not just about Six or Mono, it’s about childhood, growth, uncertainty and fear. It forces us to re-evaluate our own world by making us look at this horrible, malformed one. I was impacted emotionally by this game, as you can tell by the title. It made me consider childhood and trauma the way the first game made me consider the fundamental state of greed and want. The thing is, as heft as both those concepts are, one of them is much more digestible. I can think about greed all day. I’m a greedy, grinder, coveting son of a bitch. But cycles of trauma can be a little too much for a guy who’s dad always told him that “the best way to interact with those around you is to keep the doors of intimacy shut tight, forever and ever.” I mean, what the fuck?
But, the emotional heft and the robust gameplay make this a worthy sequel and an excellent experience overall. If you liked the first game, you would probably like this game to a certain degree. Now, no Maw, less mystery and less horror may ding the experience slightly but it’s still Little Nightmares at it’s core and I think going forward you’re more likely to see the franchise build off this than the first game. It’s a necessary step in the evolution of a franchise that is many ways it’s own cottage genre. The child coded philosophical horror platformer of the first game has no rival and after Little Nightmares 2, it still doesn’t.
