Blair Loveday
Little Nightmares was a strange little delight.
A cleverly built puzzle platforming game that was as charming as it was creepy as you navigated the yellow raincoat wearing Six around this terrifying and massive world.
Now we get to visit the nightmares again in Little Nightmares 2 from developers Tarsier Studios, and they have gone, well, even more nightmarish.
I’ll come out and say it, I am a complete and utter wuss.
When my wife says we should watch a scary movie, I say nope. Sure once upon a time I cowered whilst pretending to be a stereotypical man type watching the movie that would give me the willies for months, but now I straight out say nope. When it comes to games, I am even more of a wuss, but there was something about Little Nightmares that had me curious.
The first game had a lot of creepy imagery and an atmosphere that got under your skin, but in an interesting way, not a scary one. The second game did something similar but managed to push it that little bit further.
This game has you running around a world as the young boy Mono.
He quickly encounters Six and the two make their ways through the world. The first Level initially feels like an interesting change as you are in a forest exploring.
This immediately feels less claustrophobic than the world of the first game which was always inside the big boat. This feeling doesn’t last long as you enter a building and… well it goes from unnerving location to unnerving location.
A lot of the tenseness has been dialled up for this game as well.
There is a long level that reminded me of the creepy nurses from Silent Hill that properly got under my skin. I had to turn the sound down and charge through the Level as quickly as possible to get through it. Again, I am a wuss, but it has definitely been dialled up.
The gameplay is pretty much the same as the first game which is generally good but a little bit janky at times. There were timed button prompts that didn’t quite line up to what I was doing and deaths felt unfair, but it was minor.
The key to whether or not you will enjoy this is whether or not you want more of the original Little Nightmares. For the most part the game doesn’t improve on the first Little Nightmares so much as it carries it on into a new setting.
Released: February 2021
Rating: PG
Platforms reviewed: PlayStation 4/5
Genre: Puzzle
Developer: Tarsier Studios
Publisher: Bandai Namco