Little Nightmares 1 & 2: A Must-Play This Halloween!

Halloween is one of the best holidays, in my opinion. You may not get time off from work or school for it (and you really should!), but the color scheme is warm, inviting, and marks the change from summer to autumn. I start drinking more hot cocoa, start to notice the change in atmosphere as I sit around a campfire (here in northern Minnesota, it gets particularly cold during September and October), start wearing sweaters, enjoy whatever is left of the fall leaves, carve some Jack-O-Lanterns, and look forward to eating a tub of candy while watching It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown with my family.

Oh, and let’s not forget watching other Halloween movies, shows, and TV specials, as well as playing spooky video games. That’s an important part of Halloween! As such, it’s time to start writing about Halloween stuff, and I’d like to start with two video games: Little Nightmares and Little Nightmares II.

What Are They?

Little Nightmares is a series that emphasizes childhood fears, embracing the grotesque and the off-putting. Unlike games such as Resident Evil, they aren’t terribly gory. In the first game, you play as a girl named Six (not to be confused with Stranger Things’ Eleven) who finds herself trapped on a ship called The Maw. Here, children are kept in cages and small rooms until the grotesque beings who work there decide to eat them. Six is on a quest to survive, meanwhile something truly monstrous seems to lurk inside of her as well.

The second game is actually a prequel in which you play as Mono, a boy who is being pursued by a creature known as The Thin Man. He finds Six and the two decide to survive in this world populated by monsters together. The game offers a wider look at the world – a world that eerily looks like our own – of Little Nightmares, expanding upon the story and offering twists and turns that the previous installment lacked. Not to mention, it does all of this while leaving only cryptic clues as to why the world is in the state it’s in.

Why Should You Play Them?

I say them because the two games really compliment each other, and they’re almost like a single game in my eyes. It helps that, unlike games such as Resident Evil or Silent Hill, these games a relatively short. You can easily get through them before the holiday arrives! They’re like reading a short story – they get you sucked in, but they don’t take you on an adventure with a million characters, plot twists, power-ups, etc. Your goals are simple: escape The Maw and avoid the Thin Man.

They also have an atmosphere you don’t encounter much in games. When most people think of horror, they think of shooting zombies that jump scare you, playing through your own slasher film or monster flick (think Until Dawn), aggravating puzzles as the sounds of creatures close in on you, etc.

Little Nightmares doesn’t do that. It feels a little bit like a more grotesque version of The Nightmare Before Christmas. In fact, many of the characters, were they friendlier, would easily have a place in Halloween Town! Perhaps what I mean to say is that if Nightmare were a horror flick, it would be Little Nightmares.

The characters also manage to stand on their own, offering players a surprising amount of insight despite the total lack of dialogue in the game. There are no text boxes to tell you anything, nor is there spoken dialogue, yet you feel like you know and understand the characters.

I also appreciate how the story can be as simple or complex as you allow it to be. These games can be enjoyed casually, but you can also get absorbed in the world and join the thousands of people online in trying to piece together every hidden clue and solve the mystery behind the world of Little Nightmares and the horrors plaguing our protagonists.

Why Don’t You Want to Play It?

These games are short. While this is also a reason to play it, if you’re the type of person who doesn’t want to play a game unless you can get sucked into a world and live there for a good while, then you may find this game frustrating. It leaves you with more questions than answers regarding its story and characters, and the prequel doesn’t do much to answer any of them. This is a series that either insists you shut off your brain and just enjoy the creep factor or that you spend all your time picking apart clues and Easter eggs as you create endless theories all in regards to a few games that you can beat in just a day or two if you power through.

Some segments of the games are also very frustrating. You cannot manually save the game, relying instead on checkpoints that sometimes feel like they’re far too far apart. The games aren’t Dark Souls levels of challenging, but they’re still difficult in some areas.

But, Seriously, Play It!

If you have played it, keep the spoilers to yourself in the comments!