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| Image from https://www.behance.net/gallery/88698867/Little-Nightmares-II |
So what is Little Nightmares II? Developed by Tarsier Studios and published by Bandai Namco, Little Nightmares is a horror game franchise focusing on a world of giants. And when I say "giants" I mean everything is bigger than the humans(?) you play as. Heck, even something as simple as a wooden stool is so big that your character can barely climb up on top of it. The games focus on using platforming skills to navigate environments that would be considered mundane, were not for the literally gigantic proportions of both the furniture and the monsters living in said environments. Released in 2021, Little Nightmares II is a direct sequel to the 2017 original. I personally considered Little Nightmares I to be an excellent game, it being such a surreal and unique experience both as a horror game and as a platformer. Though in my review of the first game, I made the argument that it doesn't "count" as horror due to a lack of traditional jump scares. I now regret making that claim, since the notion that a game is only "horror" if it has jump scares was ignorant of me. After all, any work of art that seeks to disturb and unsettle is horror, even if the means to cause that reaction differ from the "standard" methods used by similar works.
Little Nightmares is unique among horror games for two main reasons. The first reason is the game is played in a third-person perspective, meaning you can actually see your character moving around. Most horror games are played in first-person, making you see directly through the eyes of the protagonist. But the third-person perspective calls attention to the characters you play as, which considering the "true nature" of one character in particular, is rather fitting. The second reason is that, with the exception of some tie-in comics and a debatably canon series of audio plays that Bandai Namco released on their YouTube channel, the Little Nightmares series tells its story without so much as a single word of dialogue, instead letting body language and environmental details do all the narrative work. As such, Little Nightmares is a story that is as mysterious as it is open to speculation. But it's not mysterious in the same way that Five Nights at Freddy's is. That franchise is mysterious because it hides story-relevant information from the player in increasingly elaborate ways, but the information itself is fairly simple. Little Nightmares doesn't hide information, it just gives you information that only makes sense with the benefit of hindsight. Basically, you don't have to go digging through three different lore novels or solve a riddle hidden in the source code of the creator's website to the understand what's going on. The only information that is not (to my knowledge) in the game itself are the names of the two main characters, Mono and Six. But the story still works even without knowing their names, you would just get used to calling them the Boy and the Girl respectively.
So do you need to play the first Little Nightmares to understand the sequel? Well, yes and no. Some scenes don't hit as hard narratively without experiencing the original. After all, what significance can a newcomer expect to gain from the scene where a little girl dons a bright yellow rain coat? But considering the wordless story and overall mysterious vibe that the series is going for, knowing what happened in the first game is not required. That, and it's entirely possible that Little Nightmares II takes place before the first game. Maybe. Because of the ambiguity of this title, I will be judging it primarily on its own merits and only bring up comparisons to the original game when it is relevant to do so. One little warning before I explain the game any further. While Little Nightmares II is rated T for Teen by the ESRB (thus it is intended for ages 13 years or older), it is still very much a horror game and as such there might be disturbing imagery and subject matter too intense or macabre for more sensitive audiences. Continue reading at your own discretion.
Now, Little Nightmares II is a rather short game. You could beat this game in about 10 hours or less. This is both a blessing and a curse. The blessing is that the short length is good for a "bite-sized" experience, or if you want to try speed running, then this is a good game to start speed running for. The curse is that if you really like the game, you might finish it earlier than you were expecting and are left feeling mildly disappointed at the short length. Because of the game's short length, as well as its level structure (the protagonists go to giant-sized version of a seemingly normal place, they encounter the giant living in said place and either destroy it or escape from it), I will going over the broad strokes of all five main levels, as well as some fun facts here and there. I won't discuss every single thing, like every puzzle or every chase scene, but I will give the general vibe of the level.
Our story begins with a vision of a hallway with an ominous looking door at the far end. This hallway is important for later, so keep it in the back of your mind. Once the vision ends, our protagonist wakes up in a forest filled with broken television screens. The main character of Little Nightmares II is a young boy wearing a paper bag mask that Tarsier named Mono in promotional material, but given the wordless nature of this game's storytelling, you would have no way of knowing Mono's name otherwise. Anyway, Mono moves through the forest by solving physics based puzzles, like pushing boxes around to form a makeshift staircase or swinging on a rope to cross a gap that's too wide for him to jump over. Even before we meet the main monster for this level, we encounter human(?) sized beartraps and hunting nets filled with rotting carcasses. There is something in these woods that appears to be hunting humans (and possibly other giants) for some purpose. Maybe for sport? Or for satiating a depraved appetite? It wouldn't be the first time Little Nightmares tackled the theme of a monstrous hunger driving people to committing acts of extreme debauchery.
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| Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-88 |
Mono comes across a cabin in the woods, clearly built with a giant in mind. In there he finds a young human(?) girl trapped in the basement, with several tally marks implying that the girl has been stuck down there for at least 55 days. The Girl's only comfort being a music box playing a haunting melody pulled straight from the original Little Nightmares. So Mono frees her by grabbing a nearby human-sized hatchet and breaking down the door The Shining style. While this girl is reluctant to cooperate with Mono at first, the two of them soon find a series of obstacles that are impossible to overcome by themselves, and so they decide to work together for the foreseeable future. This is the main "gimmick" of Little Nightmares II. From this point onward the player with have a companion that will automatically assist with certain puzzles, such as helping to push heavy objects around or giving them a boost to jump up to an otherwise out-of-reach ledge. There's also a dedicated "hold hands" button that allows you to manually control both Mono and the Girl at the same time, by making them hold hands together. Which is surprisingly cute and wholesome for a game filled to the brim with ghoulish horrors.
Fun fact! Tarsier originally intended for the whole game to have a two-player co-op mode, with player one being Mono and player two being the Girl. Unfortunately, The co-op mode was sadly scrapped early on in development because Tarsier couldn't figure out how to get it to work properly. And this is an interesting tidbit because Bandai Namco recently announced Little Nightmares III, and that game's main gimmick is that it has an actual, genuine two-player co-op mode like the one that this game was originally planned to have. So even though Little Nightmares III is being developed by Supermassive Games instead of Tarsier, it's nice to see one of Tarsier's unused ideas get (hopefully) fleshed out in a future project.
Mono and the Girl escape the cabin and head into a nearby workshop where we are introduced to our first enemy, the Hunter. The Hunter is a giant responsible for setting up those traps seen earlier in the Forest. The Hunter covers his face with a primitive mask made from a burlap sack with a single hole for him to see through. A common theme across the Little Nightmares franchise is that almost everyone living in this world hides their real faces with masks and other pieces of headwear. Even Mono and Six cover their faces, the former with a paper bag and the latter with a raincoat hood. So the idea of hiding one's face behind a mask is clearly important. But the other giants' masks looked "better quality" for lack of a better term. Either being a stretched out faux-skin material or a ceramic Kabuki mask like the ones used in Japanese theater. But the Hunter's mask looks homemade, which means he either can't afford a real mask or he has rejected giant society by making his own. He also has an uncanny interest in taxidermy, since his cabin is filled with stuffed humans(?) posed to look like they are having a "normal" family dinner.
The rest of the Forest level is spent either running from the Hunter in exhilarating chase scenes or sneaking around him in tense stealth sections. Funnily enough, the Hunter is the least supernatural monster in the whole series. Every other monster has stretching limbs, heightened senses or straight up reality warping magic. But the Hunter is just a big guy armed with nothing more than a double-barreled shotgun, a handful of beartraps and a lamp. There's some beautiful simplicity in that. Anyway, because of his shotgun he is the only monster capable of attacking Mono and the Girl from a distance. So if they are being chased, they need to duck behind cover to avoid getting blasted, then they must run to the next piece of cover while the Hunter is reloading. The level ends with Mono and the Girl reaching a shed at the edge of the forest, and using the spare giant-sized hunting rifle inside to kill the Hunter with a point-blank shot. Overall, the Forest level is an excellent first level that introduces all the core game mechanics that the rest of the game builds upon. Running and jumping, pushing and pulling objects around, climbing up certain walls and swinging on ropes. This level also serves as an introduction on how the Girl works as a companion. Additionally, the Forest sets the vibe of the whole game. You know you are in for a wild ride when you find a net full of rotting carcasses (that may or may not be human) hanging from a tree within thirty minutes of starting the game. It establishes that this is a bleak, uncaring world where monsters will kill humans by the dozens if they are given the chance to do so.
After escaping the Forest, Mono and the Girl cross a lake(?) using a giant door as a raft. Here we are properly introduced to the main setting of this game, a location that we will just call the City for the sake of simplicity. The City is for the most part abandoned, the only indication that people lived here are piles of discarded clothing. The buildings themselves seem to curve and look downward on our two protagonists, as if the City itself is watching their every move and judging them for it. And from this point on in the game, each main level is spaced out with a brief trip to the City streets until you head back indoors. Each trip to the City streets ends with Mono finding a working television set. Every time a TV turns on, Mono is drawn to them, like a moth to a flame. And interacting with said TVs allows Mono to catch a glimpse of that ominous door at the end of the hall that was teased at the start of the game. Before he can see what's on the other side, the Girl will pull him away from the TV as it shuts down once more. Again, all of this is important for later, so keep it in the back of your mind.
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| Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-61 |
The next level is the School, which is a level that I admittedly have mixed feelings on. First a little context. A feature that's new to Little Nightmares II is that Mono can pick up certain objects, such as wooden sticks and giant-sized utensils and use them as improvised weapons to attack minor enemies. The Forest doesn't really have any enemies besides the Hunter, who is clearly too big and strong to attack directly. So the School introduces the Bullies, the students of the School and the first enemy type that can be harmed with said weaponry. As such, if the Forest was an introduction to puzzle solving and Jolly Cooperation, then the School is the introduction to the combat system. The problem is that Mono's attack animation is rather slow, which makes sense since he is at best an adolescent human using tools meant for giants. But because of the slow attack animation, you basically have to time your attacks perfectly to defeat the Bullies, because if you swing your weapon too early or too late, they will kill Mono with one grab. The fact that Mono dies in one hit combined with his slow attack speed forces you to "git gud" as the saying goes, because this game's combat mechanics leave very little room for error. This is the only real criticism I have of the game, that the combat is just a little bit too unforgiving. What's worse is that (mild spoiler alert!) the enemies in the next level are nowhere near as aggressive as the Bullies, and if the Bullies' aggression was reduced slightly it would not be anywhere near as bad as it is currently. Like, I have beaten Little Nightmares II dozens of times. I've gotten every collectible possible and even tried my hand at just for fun speed running. But the School trips me up every playthrough precisely because of the unforgiving combat.
But on the subject of things I do like about the School, it has my favorite monster in the whole game, the Teacher. The Teacher is a female giant who, aside from her wrinkled "face" and stiff body movements, appears to be relatively normal. Then her neck starts stretching and slinking around the School like a demented serpent. The Teacher is the scariest monster in the game, because her design and abilities make you feel viscerally uncomfortable just from looking at her. And the Bullies, which devolve into rowdy degenerates when left to their own devices, shrivel up in fear when the Teacher is hosting a lesson. The whole School seems to fear the Teacher. Speaking of, while I dislike the combat sections with the Bullies, I do like the design and aesthetic of the School. Having such a mundane setting be twisted into a giant maze of bookshelves, desks and school supplies is peak Little Nightmares level design. And honestly, if it weren't for the combat sections with the Bullies, the School would have been my favorite level.
Anyway, early on in the level the Girl gets kidnapped by the Bullies, forcing Mono to fight his way through the School on his own. After spending almost the entire Forest level together, this is the first time our protagonists have been separated. As such, you do feel a little handicapped in your options, on top of the worry you feel for the Girl's well being. You get her back towards the end of the level, which leads to one of my favorite scenes from the whole game. So imagine. Mono and the Girl have been reunited, they're sneaking through a School corridor, and there is a lone Bully absentmindedly scribbling on the floor. There's a sledgehammer that you can grab. So your first instinct is to grab the sledgehammer and bonk the Bully before they can notice you. That's how you dealt with the Bullies before. But before you even have a chance to pick it up, the Girl runs over to the Bully and grabs them in a stranglehold. And then she breaks the Bully's head open with just her bare hands. If it wasn't for the Bully's head being made of porcelain instead of flesh and bone, this kill would have earned the game an M for Mature rating. It is genuinely one of the most disturbing sights in the game. For newcomers, seeing a child do something so brutal is not only harrowing, it's a hint that there is more to this girl than meets the eye. For veterans of the first game, this is your first clue as to the Girl's identity, which I won't spoil just yet.
So Mono and the Girl escape from the School and return to the City streets. Curiously, the Teacher is the only giant in the game that never gets killed on screen. In fact, Mono and the Girl don't do anything that prevents the School from making more Bullies. So no matter what happens next, just remember that the Teacher is still out there. But more importantly, it's now raining in the City. Mono is unaffected, but the Girl is visibly shivering from the coldness of the rain. So while exploring the streets, the Girl finds a bright yellow raincoat, which she equips immediately. Newcomers won't get what the big deal with the raincoat is, but anyone who played the first game knows why. Basically, the Girl putting on the raincoat confirms once and for all that she is the protagonist from the first game, a human(?) girl named Six. Again, because of the wordless nature of the story, you wouldn't know Six's name unless you looked at promotional material. So from here onwards, I will refer to the Girl as Six. Anyway, the reveal that Six was the Girl you were traveling with the whole time would have been a pleasant surprise, if it weren't for the fact that it was really obvious who she was from the moment she first appeared. First of all, the music box at the beginning of the game is playing a song from the first game called Six's Lullaby. Second of all, there's the aforementioned scene where the Girl smashes a kid's head open, and anyone who played the first game will tell you that Six is incredibly ruthless and prone to acts of extreme violence. And third of all, the Girl has literally the exact same model as Six, just without a raincoat. And finally, Six (complete with raincoat) is literally on the box art of the game, standing front and center alongside Mono. None of this is a bad thing, of course. It's just mildly amusing that the game treats the raincoat reveal as some shocking twist despite how obvious the whole thing is.
Anyway, after getting the raincoat and heading indoors, Mono and Six find themselves at the next main level, the Hospital. And the Hospital is the level where the game proudly says "I'M NOT GONNA SUGERCOAT IT!" and stops going easy on the player. The puzzles here are more complicated and require visiting multiple rooms to solve. There are minor enemies in the form of the Living Hands, which are exactly what they sound like. Living, disembodied hands that crawl around like spiders. These can be squished with a well-timed weapon strike from Mono, and they are as previously mentioned, nowhere near as aggressive as the Bullies. Overall, I think the combat in this level is better than the School because even Mono still dies in one hit, the skittishness of the Living Hands makes them easier to deal with. It's still not perfect, but I'll take the Living Hands over the Bullies any day. There are also multiple giants in the form of the Patients. The Patients are mannequins made with a mixture of cloth, wood and flesh. They only move when in complete darkness, so long as the lights are on they are as still as a statue. This level introduces the flashlight, a tool Mono can use to freeze the mannequins. While I don't consider the Patients to be the scariest or even the best monster in the game, they are definitely the most stressful to deal with. And also the scene where Mono is running down a hall while hundreds of Patient hands erupt from the walls is iconic. On par with the Dinner Guest scene from the first game.
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| Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-35 |
The Hospital is probably the longest level in the whole game, with the first half being Mono and Six trying to power up a defunct elevator by installing new fuses in the generator, and needing to solve a series of puzzles to get those fuses in the first place. The second half of the level is spent working your way downwards to the Hospital's morgue, where you encounter the main giant of the level, the Doctor. Insert Doctor Who joke here. Anyway, the Doctor is an obese slug-like giant that crawls on the ceiling and navigates the morgue while upside down. The Doctor can be seen experimenting on the Patients, taking them apart and putting them back together as crude abominations. However, the most interesting thing about the Doctor is that you can see the masks worn by every other giant encountered so far in his office. He even has the masks of the giants from the first game on display. So now we know who is the one in charge of making the masks and handing them out to the rest of the giants. What purpose the masks serve is still unclear at this point. Anyway, the Doctor chases Mono and Six through the rest of the morgue, but he gets trapped inside a cremator. You can either spare the Doctor's life by leaving for the elevator immediately or you can kill him by turning the cremator on, burning the Doctor alive. This is the only time in the game where the player can choose whether a giant lives or dies. It doesn't really impact the rest of the game as the Doctor never returns regardless of your decision. As sadistic as it sounds I prefer turning the cremator on, if only because it plays an animation of Six warming herself up with the cremator's fire. It's a cute animation that is made hilariously morbid with context.
The fourth and penultimate level is the City itself. Just the entire rest of the City. Mono and Six platform their way across the rooftops and sneaking through abandoned apartments. And surviving at least one collapsing building. They also figure out what happened to the rest of the City's population. They all got turned into the next main enemy type, the Viewers. The Viewers are the giant citizens of the City who having seemingly turned completely feral, despite ironically looking the most human of all the giants encountered so far. The only thing keeping their animalistic impulses in check is their addiction to TV. To give you an idea how desperate the Viewers are for any kind of stimulation, they will literally throw themselves off cliffs just to get a better look at a working TV. They will drag the TVs they do have into the shower with them so they can continue watching while bathing. They are so addicted they will put themselves, and anyone caught in their path into very real danger. Now I don't want to get too political here, but I'm pretty sure the central theme of this level is that too much media consumption is bad for your health. Especially since the only thing that the Viewers seem to watch is static. They aren't watching funny children's cartoons, or compelling romantic dramas, or even simple game shows. The Viewers are being stimulated with nothing more than meaningless lights and the pointless drone of static.
Now is the point where I am going to tell you to beware of spoilers. From this point on, things get so wild that it would be a shame to not experience the game for yourself. If you want to know my opinion on the rest of the game without spoiling it too much, I consider this level and the final level to be pinnacle of Little Nightmares' art and storytelling style. And as previously mentioned, Little Nightmares II is one of my favorite horror games ever. So if you have any interest in playing this game, you can pick it up on literally any modern gaming system. Steam, PS4, Xbox One, Nintendo Switch, etc. Without further ado, let's get into spoiler territory.
So you know how I said that every time Mono finds a working TV he is drawn to it, and how he always gets pulled away before the door at the end of the hall opens? Well, in the fourth and final visit to the City streets, he finally got to see what was on the other side of the door! It was the Thin Man, a sharply dressed giant with unnaturally long limbs. The Thin Man then reaches out of the TV and into the real world and grabs Six, leaving nothing behind but a shadowy specter. Much like the School, the rest of the City level has Mono completely alone. There are two main threats in this level, the Thin Man himself and the Viewers.
The main gimmick of the City level is that Mono has learned to do his own version of the Thin Man's ability to travel into and out of television screens. And Mono has to use this new ability to escape from Viewer hordes and reach areas that would be otherwise inaccessible. It's a really clever and creative gimmick that makes up the majority of this level's puzzles. The Thin Man himself only appears sporadically throughout the level. You cannot really hide from him the same way you hide from other giants. You either run when you see him appear, or it's back to the checkpoint with you. One detail I like is that the closer the Thin Man gets to Mono, the slower the world around him moves. So if he's right behind Mono, the whole game goes into slow motion. It's an effect that makes him both more unsettling and more dangerous than the other giants. Anyway, after enduring several injuries and losing all of his tools, Mono finally removes the paper bag mask and confronts the Thin Man directly. Mono then somehow steals the Thin Man's magical powers and destroys him with his own magic. It's an awesome scene, and the music and frame adds a sinister edge to it. Especially when you remember the first game's ending, where Six stole the Lady's magic and used her new power to slaughter hundreds of giants at once. But now that the Thin Man is dead, there are only two things left to do. The first is rescue Six, obviously. The second is track down the source of the TV transmissions that the Viewers are addicted to and destroy the signal.
The final level is the Signal Tower, inside of which is a freaky nightmare realm with looping halls and furniture floating around in zero gravity. Nothing about the Signal Tower's interior makes logical sense. Because it's a nightmare that operates on "nightmare logic" In fact, one might say that the Signal Tower is A LITTLE NIGHTMARE. Insert "bad-um ting!" sound here. And once again, spoiler alert! I mean it this time. If the City was a good enough level to deserve a spoiler warning, the Signal Tower deserves a super spoiler warning. Because not only does this section spoil the final level of the game, it also spoils some late game stuff from Little Nightmares I. Understood? Good! So Mono reunites with Six. But something is... off about her. Something... Distorted. She's now a giant, with long arms that stretch and bend at painful looking angles and mismatching legs that are grossly longer on one side than the other. And mirroring the beginning of the game, Six is sitting alone in a room, her only comfort being the music box. Mono has grown to care about Six during their time together, and possibly in a misguided attempt to help his friend, Mono breaks the music box. Which sends the distorted Six into a frenzy. This is the final boss. It's not an exciting confrontation with whatever villain designed such a horrid City. It's a young boy trying to save his friend from a fate worse than death. There's something beautifully tragic about it.
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| Image from https://adventuregamers.com/screenshots/view/38395/95962#images-79 |
So Mono trashes the music box completely, restoring Six to her original form. But the Signal Tower begins to collapse. There is one last chase scene, where Mono and Six run through the falling ruins of the Signal Tower itself. But no matter how well you play, Six will always outpace Mono, and Mono will always fail the last jump. The only reason he doesn't die is because Six turned around and caught his hand. Now, a little bit of context here. Throughout the game, about once per level is a "Leap of Faith" spot. These spots are gaps that Six can get across, but not Mono. In order to get past these spots, Mono would have to jump across and trust that Six will catch him. The whole game was building up to this exact moment. This was the final Leap of Faith spot. And well... You know that scene in The Lion King? The one where Mufasa is hanging on the ledge and Scar starts to pull him up, only to say "Long live the King!" and throw Mufasa down to his death? Yeah. Six just drops Mono down into the Signal Tower ruins. Why did she do this? There's a lot of theories. Maybe she was always planning on betraying Mono once he outlived his usefulness to her, maybe it was an act of petty revenge. After all, Six has been beaten, chased, tied up and hanged upside down, shot at, and had a building collapse right on top of her since she first met Mono. Perhaps she blamed Mono for all the bad parts of their adventure. But if she did, why did she stick around for so long? She could have left Mono the moment they reached the City, but chose to stay anyway. Maybe her hand slipped and dropping Mono was a genuine accident. But if it was an accident, while did Six act so calmly about it? Either way, Mono falls into the ruins while Six returns to the City to do as she pleases. The final scene of the game is Mono growing old and transforming into the Thin Man before locking himself away behind the door at the end of the hall shown at the start of the game.
One thing I neglected to mention earlier. There are two kinds of optional collectibles hidden in each level. The first are hats, which allow you to customize Mono somewhat. Most of these hats are goofy jokes, like a teddy bear hat and a bucket helmet. But the other collectible are Shadow Children. Shadow Children are spooky ghosts that disappear when interacted with. If you grab every Shadow Child in the game, the ending is altered to show one additional scene. In this new ending, we see Six experiencing one of her infamous hunger pains, just like in the original game. She then looks over an advert for a submarine-based restaurant called the Maw. Which is the location from the first game. And the place where Six will succumb to hunger-induced madness and become a cannibalistic sorceress. Which means there is a very good chance that this game is a prequel. Actually, I suppose the fact that Six went the whole game without using her sorceress abilities is a bigger piece of evidence for this game being a prequel, since she only gains those powers in the first game's ending. But this ending does solve one mystery from the first game, which was why was Six in the Maw in the first place. Before, it was safe to assume she was a captive or perhaps she was born there. But this ending implies she went to the Maw of her own volition with the express goal of finding something to devour. So there's that mystery solved.
So what does this ending mean? Lots of things. Firstly, the fact that Six is still experiencing her hunger pains (or perhaps, this is the origin of said hunger pains) means even if Six saved Mono at the end and the two lived happily ever after, Mono would eventually be attacked by Six once her hunger drives her to cannibalistic madness. In such a scenario, Mono would be forced to kill Six in self defense, or else Six would devour her only real friend. Therefore, Mono's days were numbered the moment he freed Six from the Hunter's basement. This isn't to demonize Mono. Not at all. I believe he was doing what he felt was the right thing. But more importantly, Mono became the Thin Man. Which means a few things. Most obviously, that "normal" humans can transform into giants, meaning all the monsters encountered in the Little Nightmares universe could have been innocent people who were twisted and contorted into monstrous parodies of their former selves. Secondly, it means that Mono is probably trapped in a Groundhog Day style time loop. Starting quite possibly as early as the Forest, freeing Six, narrowing escaping the giants, killing his future self, and being betrayed at the last minute. Only to be released by his younger self and doing everything again in a loop. Either that, or Mono was just yet another victim in a long line of different Thin Men. Each doomed to wait in a lonely room at the end of a hallway that only seems to exist in TV signals until some other poor fool repeats their mistakes and sets them free.
And there you go! A review of all five levels in Little Nightmares II. Spoilers are over, by the way. As for presentation, this is a game that rides that fine line between being hauntingly beautiful and deliberately disgusting. The closest thing I can compare it to would be something like The Nightmare Before Christmas or The Corpse Bride. In fact, the art style is reminiscent of Tim Burton movies in general. The camera is fixed at a single angle for the whole game, which gives the vibe that the player is peering into a deranged dollhouse or a sinister stage. And again, most of the locations are relatively mundane places in theory, like a school or hospital, but the gigantic and warped proportions of the buildings and furniture makes everything look uncanny. And the monsters are all excellently designed and animated. I especially like the detail they put into their "idle" animations. When the giants aren't attacking the kids, they can be seen doing normal everyday tasks around their respective facilities. The Hunter can be seen cleaning and stuffing a recent victim, the Teacher plays piano in between lessons, and the Doctor washes his hands before and after every experiment. It gives them all a little bit more personality outside of being angry murder monsters. This was something that was true of the first game's giants as well. I played the Nintendo Switch version of the game, and while I can't speak for other systems, I never encountered any kind of glitches or frame rate drops whatsoever. The whole game runs smoothly from start to finish.
The OST was composed by Tobias Lilja. And as far as this game's music goes, it bears repeating that Little Nightmares II rides that line between beautiful and disgusting. Some songs in the OST, like Six's Lullaby or Togetherness are peaceful piano melodies, while other songs like Boots through the Undergrowth or Captive Audience sound less like music that you would willingly listen to for leisurely purposes and more like an alarm going off to warn you of incoming danger. This is not a bad thing, in fact it the "stressful" songs add to the experience. Nomes in the Attic is probably one of my favorite songs from the OST because it sounds eccentric and whimsical. Fun Fact! The music that plays when Mono fights the Bullies in the School is called Crackheads. I am not making that up. Whoever came up with the OST song names needs to be given a raise for that pun.
Now, sound effects! You already know what I am going to say. Fine line between beautiful and disgusting. The sounds of things like footsteps and Mono hitting something with a weapon are clean and crisp. The sounds the giants make come in varying flavors of uncanny. Like the sound of the Teacher's skin straining as her neck stretches is yet another disturbing element of her design. The sound of the Hunter's gunshots do a good job conveying just how much force and power he packs into his weapon. And one thing that I appreciate, which is both an audio thing and a visual thing, is that there are no actual jump scares at all in Little Nightmares II. It has enough confidence that its surreal and grotesque world and monsters are scary in and of themselves that it never resorts to cheap surprises to catch you unaware. In fact, the giants are well, giant, and as such you always see and hear them coming from miles away. But this doesn't detract from their ability to frighten, but it instead enhances it. Every scene with the giants is a tense game of cat-and-mouse. You are the "mouse." in this analogy. And you will be filled with dread as you hope that the "cats" don't notice you while you're sneaking around right under their noses. And when the "cats" finally notice you, that feeling of dread is transformed into adrenaline as you run for your life.
Overall, Little Nightmares II is a masterclass of horror. Its world is macabre, its denizens monstrous, and the whole experience is magnificent. I cannot recommend this game enough. If you like horror games, or want to dip your toes in the genre without diving headfirst into something more explicitly gruesome, then Little Nightmares II is a great place to start. I give it an easy 5 stars out of 5.
Little Nightmares II is owned by Bandai Namco and developed by Tarsier (who are no longer working with Bandai Namco at the time of writing). None of the screenshots used belong to me. Please support the official release.
