Little Nightmares : A Highly Disturbing Experience

Little Nightmares is a puzzle/platformer video game developed by Tarsier Studios and produced by Bandai Namco. It was released in April 2017 on PC, PS4 and Xbox One. This game immerses us in the dark and uncomfortable atmosphere of a nightmare. How does this game succeed in making us experience this feeling of uneasiness ?

First, the story embodies us into that of child, Six, in an unknown world, full of monsters. The use of the theme of childhood is a well-known mechanic borrowed from horror cinema to thrust into the spectator a feeling of anguish (see The Exorcist Theme). It’s caused by the stronger empathy we feel towards children but it also calls to an unconscious fear of seeing our progeny turn against us. This mechanic is omnipresent in Little Nightmares, first, through the main character’s identity, but also by the abundant amount of toys in the background, the soundtrack like Six’s theme with children’s voices and even with the camera which shows us the frame in which the game takes place, like a dollhouse.

The Mew, the submarine where the story takes place, is a place full of monsters directly echoing with the nightmares’ monsters (the first monster the player encounters, The Janitor, was inspired by Freddy Krueger). These creatures looks like humans but with considerable disturbing deformities recalling Hans Giger’s or even Francis Bacon’s works, famous because of their disturbing paintings calling out our own fear of the deformity and, more generally, that of disease.

The dark universe of Little Nightmares affects this feeling of anguish that is given by the experience. In this game, the player has a lighter that they may light at any moment to find their way in the dark rooms of the game. The fact that the player chooses when to light a room causes them to be a lot more frightened when they have to turn it off, for example, when they climb on a platform, because they no longer know whether monsters are close by, but also because it brings back the player to a childish fear of the dark.

Labelling Little Nightmares as a “horror game” does not hold up after a thorough analysis. In fact, although fear is very present within this game, it’s true theme revolves around food and hunger (the original name of the project was Hunger) which can be seen, firstly, in the story but also in the background (Six passes through a kitchen, a banquet, ...). During the whole length of the game, the character will try to eat whatever she can and avoid being cooked and eaten. This overabundance of food raises a deep disgust when the player finds themselves, for example, in a room full of bags holding the corpses of children, or, even, when the main character eats a live rat. It calls out again childish fears, this time, the fear of being eaten.

Thereby, Little Nightmares succeeds to create a truly frightening and disturbing universe by invoking unconscious fears thanks the atmosphere set by the game but also with the story it narrates.