Little Nightmares

The trope of "seemingly innocent youth trapped in a world that forces them to make harsh choices to survive" has found it's way into being one of the most prominent narrative threads for smaller or "indie" games over the last ten or so years, give or take, largely stemming from the success of Playdead's Limbo, and then again with Inside. Tarsier Studios absolutely take inspiration from these games and others like it, but with varying degrees of more or less ambiguity. By eschewing the straight 2D plane for something with more depth of field, and giving the player character a more obvious arc, Little Nightmares sets itself apart from those more famous influences, for better and also for worse.

Waking up in The Maw, an almost fortress-like traveling buffet of hedonism, a little girl named Six tries to escape her prison and make it to freedom. The sentence I just wrote features two proper nouns that I found out only by visiting Wikipedia as none of this information is actually surfaced in the game in any way. And that's fine, to be fair, but it is slightly odd that there even are names for these places and people when you could play the game and never know unless you actively sought out answers elsewhere. Six takes on quite a personal journey and shows signs of growth and change as a character too, so it's bizarre that this isn't leaned on more heavily. There is a darkness that permeates through the whole experience that's actually really interesting and engaging, but at under four hours the story also doesn't outstay it's welcome.

Speaking of the themes of the game, upon doing some quick research into it's origins, the project was originally announced in trailer form in 2014 under the name Hunger, and now that I've seen the game through, boy would that have been a better title. Yes the girl is little, and yes the world is a waking nightmare, but Little Nightmares is a generic title that doesn't quite convey what the game is about. The original title feels much more suited to what's going on because the game is centered around consumption at it's core, specifically in the form of eating. Almost every enemy you encounter is either trying to catch you to eat you, or because you have interrupted them creating food for others to eat and are considered a pest. Furthermore, Six herself is suffering from bouts of extreme hunger, which causes her to double over in pain until her appetite is satiated. The customers of The Maw are all depicted as almost being too fat to move due to their unceasing feasting, but still crawl and waddle after you in a way that is honestly most evocative of Studio Ghibli's film Spirited Away (you know, the parts with all the eating).

The core gameplay is that of a puzzle-platformer, mostly in side-scrolling 2D, but with some limited depth of field most of the time. This doesn't always work out for the best, as the depth sometimes has a way of creating platforming problems and artificially making sections seem harder. As well, the checkpointing after deaths was sometimes unkind and a little tedious, especially in the first half. Luckily this becomes less of an issue in the latter half, but there were many sections I ran through multiple times because the checkpoint was down a long hallway where nothing happens for no reason. The look of everything is a real winner, however. The dripping, cavernous dungeons, the messy kitchen area, the lavish dining hall and all the other locations are each wonderfully realized and unique while still maintaining a similar style that keep it clear that these are all parts of the same whole. The monsters and awful denizens of The Maw are also delightfully grotesque and creepy to look at, even if the game isn't trying too hard to be a horror game.

Style and tone ultimately make up for the early short-comings of the puzzles and checkpoints to make a game well worth playing. There are five distinct chapters, and even by the end of the second I was hooked and wanted to see where this would go. The story gets dark, especially the ending, including a moment in the fourth chapter - easily the shortest in the game - that is one of my favorite moments in games this year.

With great ambiance and monstrous obstacles that each take exactly as long as they should, Little Nightmares ended up as something that I'll remember for a while, even if it's title doesn't really pop. However, I don't want my feelings on the title - titles being a thing I tend to fixate on - to colour this game in a bad light. It's fairly sound mechanically, and is an impressive exercise in story-telling with no dialogue or text. Even in a field that is becoming as crowded as that, Little Nightmares should set itself apart at least enough to warrant a look into a gruesome world of gluttony, greed, and overindulgence.