5 minute read
liTTle NighTmares
Tarsier Studios’ art director created Six, with her small frame and yellow raincoat, during a concept jam in 2013
Publisher BAndAI nAmco / develoPer TArSIEr STudIoS / format XBoX onE / release date ouT now/ cost £15.49
Just six minutes to midnight kimberley ballard
Famed fantasy narratives often involve waking up in a strange land. Kansas teen Dorothy finds herself in the Technicolor dreamscape of Oz; Chihiro becomes a servant in a bathhouse for spirits and ghouls; Wendy is spirited to a world where children never have to grow up.
Little Nightmares is obviously influenced by these narratives, but sets itself apart by painting a night sky over its fantastical backdrops. In Tarsier’s vision of little-girl-lost, we play Six, a child who wakes up alone in a labyrinthine underwater mansion called The Maw. No context is given: from the moment the game begins, all we know is that we’re very vulnerable, and very alone.
Where the aforementioned narratives are candyland theme parks of colour and sound, The Maw is like the sewer system that runs beneath them: dank and dark, dripping with menace. It’s evocative in the most chilling sense of the word, taking elements of childhood and twisting them until they’re gruesome caricatures. One room we creep through is decorated like a toddler’s playroom, full of building blocks and a train set; in others tiny hand prints dot the wall in black liquid. Even the monsters that slip from the shadows look like mutant toys: teddies and china dolls torn apart and rebuilt like Frankenstein’s monster.
As Six navigates the intestines of The Maw, you’ll discover that this is a game all about stealth. Six doesn’t have anything but a lighter, which she uses to mark her way in darker places, and her ability to hide in cubby holes. Players without patience won’t get very far. Many rooms are riddled with traps: whether it’s a monster that can hear every creak of the floorboards, no matter how quiet you are, or a series of perilous jumps.
As a platformer, Little Nightmares isn’t the most tactile. To jump you have to press the X button and at the right moment grab onto edges with the right trigger. You also press the right trigger to interact with objects. Sometimes it’s hard to know what objects you can actually use, as Six will reach for anything, no matter how useless. In a couple of areas, you also need to call a lift by throwing an object at a switch – annoyingly, you never know where you’re aiming, and it can take multiple throws to finally nail the right angle and height.
short cut
What is it?
A dark puzzleplatformer about a girl called Six who must navigate an underwater house of horrors.
What’s it like?
A gothic storybook for children. Think Edward Gorey if the children could move and run from their pursuers. Who’s it for?
Fans of Inside; dark fantasy; and horror that plays upon childhood nightmares.
Design for life
But this is really a game to play for the character and environmental design. In this sense, it is nothing short of a gruesome masterpiece. Everything about Little Nightmares is heightened, from the rooms of The
right what six didn’t know was that these long arms were just desperate for a hug. it gets lonely down in the maw, okay?
Left navigating the game involves clambering over things we take for granted in real life, such as drawers or a pile of books.
Maw to the creatures that inhabit them. Bloated chefs covered in rolls of putrid fat roam the kitchens, while long-armed janitors with mouths of tiny teeth can sniff Six out at any distance. In other places, the game is strangely beautiful. One area looks like an ornate Japanese tea house, decorated in plush purple wallpaper, laid out with platters of baked ham, fish, pies and sausages.
Neat flourishes are scattered throughout. When Six is afraid or in danger, the controller will vibrate along with her heartbeat. The camera also tilts in a sickening fashion as The Maw dips along the waves. Playing upon the dream perspective of Alice In Wonderland, Six is a tiny girl in a very large world. Keys are as big as her body; chairs and doorways loom over her, and paintings of eyes follow her everywhere she goes.
Despite not saying a word or even having a face, it’s easy to become attached to the game’s young heroine. Six is a plucky, resourceful girl, and she meets every danger with the kind of foolhardy courage only a child can muster. One scene sees her travel from one room to another via a dumbwaiter, finding meats in the cold store and grinding them into sausages to use as a rope – all while clad in her luminescent raincoat, her bare feet tittering across the ground,
SInISTEr STylE
The most striking thing about little nightmares is its art style. Tarsier Studios’ cEo ola holmdahl has listed the stories of roald dahl, point-andclick series clock Tower (about a young woman who has to escape a maniac called the Scissorman in a dark mansion) and Japanese mythology as visual influences. holmdahl has also described the game as having a “dollhouse perspective” with a stop-motion quality to the animation.
Inside your fears
Of course, comparisons to Playdead’s 2016 indie hit Inside will abound, and there are many obvious similarities. But there is one fundamental difference: Little Nightmares is so much more playful. Where Inside was shrouded in dread, Tarsier revels in its strange environment. It’s equally as unpleasant, yes, but in a storybook fashion. In between escaping from monsters, Six bounces on mattresses and skids along floors as if she’s in a playground. There’s an of air exuberance that Inside lacked.
Little Nightmares is a great game until its last act, when it becomes an amazing one. Without spoiling anything, Six travels into the heart of The Maw and must escape its queen, who wants nothing more than to devour her like a rare delicacy. In moments like this, childhood has never seemed so thrilling or so violently beautiful. Move over, Inside, this is the game of dark dreams. n
oXm verdict
A carnival of grotesque and gothic fancies makes up for the finicky platforming.
