Little Nightmare 2 Review: Horror games don't require a sudden surprise

When it was released in April 2017, the first installment of "Little Nightmare" did not generate much buzz among the player community, partly due to the fact that the publisher, Bandai Nanmenggong, did not put too much effort into promoting the game; On the other hand, with games like "Hell's Frontier" and "In Depth" at the forefront, players have even higher requirements for this dark horror style horizontal decryption game.

Thanks to the word-of-mouth among post sales players, Little Nightmare gradually entered the mainstream view, and people only realized its outstanding features. Developers; Tarsier Studios has previously been responsible for the development of action games on platforms such as "Little Planet PSV", "Little Planet 3", and "Tear Paper and Mail". The visual style tends to be more cartoonish. Although "Little Nightmare" was the first horror game they were responsible for, they successfully ensured a solid performance in platform actions by creating scene designs that focused on atmosphere, using differences in light and shadow and bizarre character descriptions to render the atmosphere, presenting a closed and dark environment. Fear is not through sudden fright, but gradually spreads and permeates into the spirit as players explore the world and understand the plot.

After one year of release, "Little Nightmare" sold over 1 million copies, with sales exceeding 2 million within three years of release. This is a good result for a second tier horror game, and the player base accumulated by the first generation has also earned "Little Nightmare 2" a far ahead attention. Fortunately, "Little Nightmare 2" inherits all the advantages of the previous game and once again proves that a horror game does not need to be taken aback.

Terrifying nightmares, no need to rely on fright

Dreams are diverse, but many people encounter a few fixed scenes or forms when they fall into nightmares. When I was young, I often dreamed of a long haired man with sunglasses chasing me with a gun, or couldn't find the end in a circular area. It is very likely that we have experienced and deeply engraved things in reality, or the environment we once lived in has been projected into the dream. Therefore, when you enter the world of Little Nightmare 2, you will find that everything here is indeed those scenes that will appear in nightmares.

The dimly lit school, students with fake smiles playing and frolicking, and there are traces of campus violence in the corners. The only teacher who appeared in the school forcefully tapped the blackboard with chalk in the front row of the classroom, and the students sitting in front of the podium were confined to their seats. The moment you pass through the desk and are caught by the teacher, a few students in the back row will jump up and chase after you closely. If you think it's over if you dodge the pursuit of the students, the teacher who is still in front of the blackboard gave a fatal blow - she stretched her head to search for your trace, until she swallowed you in one gulp.

A teacher who can twist and stretch his neck 360 degrees, with lifeless eyes and a eerie smirk on his face, his head hitting the ceiling pipe just to kill the weak you, this twisted and bizarre plot may really exist in nightmares.

The excellence of Little Nightmare 2 lies in the fact that the game does not use low-level intimidating techniques like "Jump Scare" to torture players, but instead uses a gradual sense of scene immersion to lure players into the traps that have already been set. If you think you can successfully escape by avoiding a few students who are similar in size, in fact, teachers who are five or six times taller than you will become monsters chasing you. As long as you make a faint sound, you will see a slender neck projected from the wall behind you, connected to an expressionless head, and then the teacher's terrifying face appears on the screen.

In each level of the game, there will be scenes where players engage in battles with these large bosses (all of which are actually running for their lives). When the boss approaches the box you are drilling into, the already dead environment will slowly produce the sound of Mano's heartbeat, and the handle will vibrate slightly. This kind of hide and seek with a strong sense of immersion makes people's palms sweat every time.

The horror of Little Nightmare 2 is not limited to that.

The hospital level can be called the most spiritually polluted level in this game. Many people who temporarily give up in the middle due to the overly thrilling game atmosphere are there - imagine a large number of bodies scattered on the hospital bed, a power outage causing no light in the room, and Mono relying on the faint light of a flashlight to see the road clearly. When the light swept through, you found many strange looking patients standing in the room. You don't know which one would quickly approach you in an extremely twisted posture, and only by shining a flashlight can they stop their footsteps. Just as you were taking a breath of relief, there was no illuminated area behind you, and there was a group of monsters walking quickly and crunching

The atmosphere rendering of the "123 Wooden Man" caused obvious mental pollution to me, to the point where I paused the game several times for "tactical drinking", calming down my overly fast heartbeat.

This reminds me of the horror game series "Black Photo Collection", also released by Bandai Namco and developed by European and American manufacturers, which is filled with a lot of speechless Jump Scare. From this perspective, the tactics of "Little Nightmare" are indeed very clever, much stronger than the skull in "Black Album" that suddenly jumps in front of you in just two steps, and must be accompanied by sudden and piercing sound effects that make you want to drop your headphones.

The Story of Two People

The protagonist of the first installment of "Little Nightmare" was Xiao Liu wearing a yellow raincoat. The game revolves around "hunger" throughout the story, which scares players who fully immerse themselves in emotions during the "dramatic changes" in the later stages of the game. Therefore, when the official revealed that "Little Nightmare 2" will tell stories before the first generation, why Mono, as the protagonist of the game, did not appear in the first generation, and what Little Six experienced before the dramatic changes became the biggest suspense of the plot.

Compared to the first generation of isolated cruise ships, the storyline of Little Nightmare 2 is more expansive, with players expanding their exploration scope to a city. At the same time, the focus of the theme has also changed - from a solo journey in the first generation to a bond between two people in the sequel. The game does not have any dialogue or dialogue, but rather showcases the emotional changes between the two through a set plot: Mono rescues Little Six from the hunter's hand, and Little Six relies heavily on Mono at this time. The two cooperate in school and hospital to escape, and their relationship gradually deepens. Mono's fear fails to protect Little Six, and their relationship gradually breaks down until the story reaches its end.

In order to allow players to experience the emotional connection between Mano and Xiao Liu, Little Nightmare 2 introduces the design of "calling" and "holding hands" based on the addition of Xiao Liu as an AI teammate. Holding hands easily reminds people of Takeshi Ueda's ICO, but in the game, the holding hands between Mano and Kobayashi are more superficial, like showing players that "in order to make you feel the bond between the two, you can hold hands". In addition, when sprinting over a cliff, Kobayashi on the opposite side will grab Mano's outstretched hand and pull him up.

Calling is equivalent to having Mano call Xiao Liu to his side, from a gaming perspective, it allows NPCs to go to designated areas according to the player's wishes. However, sometimes calling can also trigger special events, such as turning enemies into incinerators at the hospital level. Xiao Liu will stand in front of the switch and ask the player to activate the incinerator to burn the enemy. At this time, the player can call Xiao Liu to leave the area (and also jump out of the hidden achievement of not burning the enemy). In the later stages of the game, the call combines gameplay and plot performance, and each call from the player will have an impact on the progress of the plot, showcasing the rupture of the emotional bond between Mano and Xiao Liu.

But as a game that focuses on solving puzzles as an important means of advancing the process, Little Nightmare 2 has limited changes in puzzle design, even if it is joined by a peer NPC, it has not changed much: the first generation of solving puzzles with one person finding a ladder, this time it has been changed to solving with Little Six using a ladder; Find a few chess pieces in the scene and press them on the base according to the instructions on the wall. This kind of puzzle can be completed by one person. At best, Xiao Liu can help you hold a prop to start; Throwing garbage into the incinerator and burning it can obtain a key, burning corn can obtain popcorn, and there were similar scenes and puzzles in the first generation.

The rest is nothing more than playing hide and seek with a massive enemy, accompanied by a escape plot, or using a hammer that is about the same size as the body to struggle against malicious monsters. This can sometimes be a bit unpleasant - although the game presents the scene in a horizontal format, players can freely move within a three-dimensional space range. Under the limitation of a fixed perspective, it is easy to visually misjudge the distance between a character and an object and their next landing point. This has led me to repeatedly fall into a cliff without touching the edge of the platform during continuous jumps, or to hit it with a hammer, leaving me half a body distance from the enemy and being directly killed.

, due to visual judgment issues, I don't know how many times it was electrocuted here

Looking back, the feature of Little Nightmare is not the collection of puzzles that test players, but the use of scene design to create a chilling atmosphere that gives people the feeling of "what I'm afraid of is this".

After the release of Little Nightmare 2, developer Tarsier Studios stated that they will no longer participate in the production of future works in the series, but will focus on developing new original IPs. Although it may sound a bit regrettable, compared to launching a similar style sequel on the already fixed mode of Little Nightmare, what I am looking forward to more is the original IP that Tarsier Studios will be responsible for in the future. After all, it is rare for a small studio like Tarsier Studios to excel in highlighting game characteristics and guiding events through atmosphere.