Little Nightmares (2017 Video Game)
8/10
Beautiful & Eerie with an epic twist
17 March 2021
Warning: Spoilers
What's so unique about Little Nightmares is it's use of story telling. It takes a page out games like Limbo and Inside in the fact that it has great story telling given through audio and visuals only, without any use of words or dialogue to literally spell anything out. Games like this take advantage of the absence of dialogue or notes to keep players interested so we explore more and play the game to the end in hopes for answers and insight. With Little Nightmares, there is plenty of visual symbolism throughout - the shoes, Six's size difference with the world, the eye, Porcelain Face Lady, the fat monsters. The setting is still unclear somewhat. Thanks to the camera, physics, and a moment outside, we know we're on some boat or floating structure of some kind. But why? It seems we're given so much information based on what we see, but so much thought and analysis is needed to piece the puzzle together. And I love that.

The gameplay revolved around platforming and puzzle solving, and while tricky at times, it's pretty straight forward. The physics of this game is as fun as physics can be in any game, and is implemented well with gameplay. There are also fun physics moments where objects will move to the sway of the boat you're in, which is really appreciated detail.

The graphics and art style of Little Nightmares is beautiful. The world design is beautiful to look at and the enemy designs were disgusting and ugly while Six and the little gnomes were adorable. I would say the art style follows a surrealist world design. Everything just seems so warped and crooked. Music was eerie and beautiful and mostly played during important moments. The iconic hum lullaby gets louder as the game goes on, hinting at Six's evolution by the end of the game.

The camera did a good a job of hinting important aspects of any puzzle and also had a bit of a sway to give that feeling of being on a boat. Sometimes it's hard to tell where you're walking and instead of going straight, you walk diagonally off a platform into the abyss. This was due to awkward camera angles and an unfortunate circumstance of 3D motion with a 2D perspective. Although the 3D-2D combo really help to add some depth of field and was a nice stylistic aspect to the game.

The ending of this game is truly iconic. You go through the whole game thinking your this innocent little gnome child trying to escape the evil giants from the oversized world around her. That's only partially true. Turns out Six was as evil as everyone else. The pure shock of seeing Six eat the little gnome friend who tried to give her food surprises even those who saw it coming as Six got progressively more carnivorous. But as someone who has seen the ending a few times now, seeing Six walk down that dining hall sucking the lives of all the fat monsters is still both as eerie and epic as seeing it for the first time.

Who was the porcelain face lady? Why was she humming the theme? What powers did she have and did Six absorb them and how? What was her connection to Six to begin with, if any? What species is Six and why was she the only one like her? What species was everything else? Is anybody even human? So many questions just left to interpretation and that's a huge attractive feature to the series because nothing is handed to us through lore, it's a whole mystery, and it's such a unique aspect to the Little Nightmares franchise.
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