Game Review: Little Nightmares 2 (2021)
Tarsier Studios
(this review contains minor spoilers about the opening chapter of the game.)
2017’s Little Nightmares showcased a distinctive surrealist horror style that was equal parts exaggeration and distortion, and it struck a near-perfect balance between cinematic dread and solid puzzle-platformer gameplay. The title garnered emphatic reactions from players and critics alike, and significantly raised the profile of the developer, Tarsier Studios. I wrote a glowing review about the title–the first video game ever reviewed in Vogue Horror–and figured the sequel was worth a few hours of time to see how this indie developer had handled their success.
Big Dreams, Too
Right from the outset, Little Nightmares 2 signals to the player that this game will have a much larger scale than the original. The opening chapter takes place in a beautiful, sprawling forest environment that is much more detailed and visually open than any in the first game. The subtle tutorial walks players through the controls as they leap over mass graves, swing on a noose, and elude cleverly hidden hunting traps presumably intended for larger game. The diminutive, bag-headed player-character, Mono, has movements and posture which closely resemble those of Six from the first game, and even though there’s no sign of The Maw, the art design and style indicate that this is still a Little Nightmares world. The game shows off a wealth of graphical assets in this opening sequence, and the impression is that this is all a clear ‘thank you’ to everyone who made the first game a success, as well an promise to deliver even more of the trademark Little Nightmares charm is this time around.
Tarsier Studios
The first monstrous enemy you encounter is an enormous sack-faced hunter, whose predictably-paced shotgun blasts can instantly kill you at range. While not necessarily more challenging, this opening adversary feels much more deadly and aggressive than the mysterious oversized grotesqueries of the original game, who sometimes occupied themselves with other tasks or gave up pursuit even after they had become aware of the player’s presence.
As the first game did, Little Nightmares 2 does an exceptional job of making you feel infinitely vulnerable. Your character doesn't even have shoes, let alone a way to defend themselves (this will change for limited stretches later), and the player understands instinctively that their only path forward is to outwit or outrun their hunters. That said, there’s something darker and grimmer about this entry, as the tiny moments of reprieve and humor in the first title are far more rare, and the stakes of the story feel much larger.
Shortly after this opening sequence, Mono reaches the edge of a looming metropolis and encounters the foreboding all-seeing eye sigil that appeared at regular intervals in the original game. He makes his way through the outskirts and comes to a schoolyard, the first of many setpieces in the game which link Mono’s peril to a classic setting of childhood fears.
Sticks, Stones, and the Z-Axis
The gameplay arena defines the content in platformers like Little Nightmares' 2, and this game regularly expects the player to navigate three-dimensional setpieces with a fixed camera in the foreground. This means you’re potentially moving 360 degrees to work through puzzles which are often cast in deep shadow. By nature, this is going to cause a few snags, as while the human brain can pretty readily navigate left-right movement with a console controller, we struggle to muster the same precision when moving from background to foreground and vice versa.
Tarsier Studios
Like its predecessor, Little Nightmares 2 expects you to die a few times working out the timing, procedure, and mechanics of challenging sequences. There’s no health stat or armor, and only the occasional use of weapons to fight back against specific dangers. The gameplay typically moves between stretches when you are undetected and safe, and moments where you’re seconds from inevitable death and being chased by a monster. In most instances, there is little room for error available, and I feel the game pushes the trial-and-error gameplay a bit past its shelf life for most players.
Even being very conscious of my focus levels and trying to play with the utmost precision, I frequently needed many attempts to figure out both the path and pacing of an particular obstacle. In chase sequences especially, the margin of failure often feels very small, such as incorrectly judging how the pathing through a cluttered area worked. Rarely did the impediments to progress feel like a personal skill gap, but rather a dearth of understanding or inherent complications of trying to puzzle out the Z-axis in a game with a fixed foreground camera. Admittedly, I don’t play a lot of platformers, so this could be a personal issue.
That said, countless times I wound up having to restart a setpiece because I was momentarily hung up on a doorframe that was slightly out of the alignment I expected, or missed a jump because I had to move across a gap that didn’t quite line up visually. The highly stylized art design and heavy shadows which permeate many of the environments in LN2 don’t make the already-challenging schema any easier, and by the end of play, I felt strongly that LN2 would be a much more fun game if it were slightly more merciful. Another way to think about it is that much of the adrenaline and excitement of a particular setpiece is lost when the player knows exactly what is required to complete the challenge but still finds themself needing to attempt it more than a dozen times.
Tarsier Studios
At one point, roughly four hours in, I had to put down the controller and make a concerted effort to restart my mindset when engaging with the title. I had become a touch embittered, so passively annoyed with the cheap ‘gotcha’ deaths and finicky margins that I was no longer giving the game credit for what it was doing well. I managed to rediscover my appreciation of LN2’s strengths, but ultimately remain critical of some of the gameplay elements.
This connects to a wider discussion I’m interested in regarding the role of challenge in video games. Developers by and large seem to really struggle with nailing down when challenge is interesting or additive to the experience, and in the last decade or so have more often than not failed to make challenging games that are rewarding specifically because of their high degree of difficulty.
I Get to Swing an Axe?
Though not always successful, the gameplay elements of Little Nightmares 2 are considerably more expansive than in the original game. In addition to the spacial and kinetic puzzles of the first game, Mono will eventually find and team up with Six, the original game’s protagonist, in an effort to make their way through the city. This will of course lead to two-person puzzles, where Six and Mono must take complimentary actions to pass the obstacles before them.
These puzzles are a real mix. While I think the first game was nearly all hits in this regard, I frequently felt that the challenges in Little Nightmares 2 were a touch opaque, and the game wasn’t doing quite enough to signpost what it wanted me to do next. To make matters worse, there are a handful of (unintended) critical-path-red-herring moments in the game, and two or three times in my playthrough I found myself repeatedly launching myself at a presumed platform or ledge that only appeared to be graspable. This is a classic example of aesthetic design choices and oversights causing gameplay compromises, and it created more than one moment of frustration.
Some other puzzles are exceptionally well-made though, and with these I found that I could make it through in a handful of attempts if I really tried to think it through before charging forward. A later sequence where Mono uses a remote control to create portals between television and distract mouth-faced monsters away from critical paths was particularly brilliant, and I wondered why this well-polished stretch felt so different from earlier, more challenging portions of the game.
Tarsier Studios
On the other hand, the art direction is exceptional, and I applaud the developers decision to preserve the immersiveness of their setting and avoid making aesthetic concessions in the name of gameplay by covering grabbable ledges in colored paint or making pull-able objects all the same hue. Visuals come first in LN2, for better or worse, and the game is undeniably beautiful.
Finally, to end on a distinctly positive note, the pacing of this game is particularly strong, contrasting brutal chases and violent setpieces with more tranquil interludes between hubs. There are great stretches where nothing is pursuing you, and you just get to soak in the vast emptiness of the strange city. The game as a whole repeats a commendable cycle of exploration and discovery before conflict and challenge, and this is something I wish more developers would consider with regard to the pacing of their games.
Final Thoughts
The short-line thesis for Little Nightmares 2 is aesthetics over all: that means gameplay, story, narrative arc, and memorability–but isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Looking at the reviews from professional publications, there’s hardly a score below eight of ten, and I think this speaks to the power of LN2 to make players forgive what it does poorly.
Despite not being a graphical powerhouse, the game is undeniably beautiful, and the artistic vision is comprehensive and complete from the first moment of the game up to its finale at the top of a tower at the center of the city. Some of the small details that go into designing an area players will pass through only once are deeply impressive, and every scene in the game has a hand-crafted feel that is almost never present in video games. Every piece of Little Nightmares 2 feels bespoke, and is a thoughtful, aware artistic representation that ties the imagery of a single scene to the wider work.
Verdict: 6/10
Strengths
Horrific artistic vision is beautifully and uniquely executed
Succeeds more than it fails in expanding the gameplay elements
Remarkably memorable
Weakness
Overreliance on trial-and-error gameplay will test even the most patient gamers
Could better signpost the critical path in many instances
4-5 hour playtime at the current price of $30 may feel like too little to some gamers
You can pick up Little Nightmares 2 on Steam, Nintendo Switch, Playstation, or Xbox.
You may also like: Tim Burton, Splatterhouse, Blasphemous, Little Nightmares 1
