Little Nightmares Series

Game Series: Little Nightmares
Released: 2017 - 2025
Game Length: 1 - 10 hours each
Grade: C

Little Nightmares

Prelude: We are going to do something a little different with this game entry. I'm going to list each release in the series and review them with full spoilers. My grade has remained consistent through the entire series mostly due to its horrific nature. There will be things that shock or disturb the standard player up to a certain degree. Although they make sure to limit jump scares specifically, there are plenty of tense moments and scenes that might be difficult to play through. To simplify things, the mobile app Very Little Nightmares or the comics are not discussed in the review.

Release: The first game of the series was released back in April 2017. The format might seem familiar to some since the company behind LittleBigPlanet downloadable content Tarsier Studios helped develop the game. The game's original title Hunger was rebranded when picked up by Bandai Namco Entertainment to avoid being confused with The Hunger Games, but its central theme about what someone is capable of consuming, whether through greed or desperation, remained intact.

Original: Sporting about four hours of content across five sections of the game, you play as a child named Six who tries to escape the confines of a ship. While there are many theories of whether you are experiencing a nightmare since you're the size of a mouse, exploring a fantastical world like in Studio Ghilbi works, or exploring the world in metaphorical terms through a child's imagination, what you experience is far from normal. You will learn the deplorable truth behind how the food really is processed as you go to such extreme lengths of eating and "absorbing" the essence of a rat in a trap, a small innocent creature called a nome, and pretty much everyone else in a single ending where you make your escape. 

Content: Each section has you trying to avoid being grabbed by some larger being. These include the Janitor with long arms that watch over the children, the chefs in the kitchen that prepare the food, the guests that are constantly eating, or the lady who watches over everything. There are a number of achievements like lighting 20 out of 30 lanterns or candles, hugging all 13 nomes, breaking all 10 hidden statues, adding three ingredients into the cooking pots, and jumping on the bed six times.

Problems: Although the concept of you being on a boat should be obvious from the designs of the doors to the enclosed hallways, the screen will constantly remind you of your situation as it rocks back-and-forth. This may cause some to become mildly nauseous as they experience a form of sea sickness. The controls, which continue through the entire series, forces you to use and hold the right trigger to grab items and the X button to run. I would have very much liked these to be reversed. I also would have preferred the tutorial hints that explain what you need to press or do come on the screen a little quicker instead of mocking me wander around for some time looking for a way forward.

Secrets of the Maw

Release: Secrets of the Maw is the downloadable content that released after the original game. The episodes were released overtime that would automatically become available if you bought the Expansion Pass. They were released June 2017, November 2017, and February 2018. The Enhanced Edition that released last month for those who pre-ordered Little Nightmares III or own the original game contained all of these, along with all four bonus "hats" that they made purchasable after implementing the new system in Little Nightmares II.

Expansion: As seen in the original portion of the game, you play as The Runaway Kid who instead of carrying a lighter is using a flashlight. This mechanic makes you more decisive on where to shine the light as you travel through dark areas or fight against foes. While you will encounter familiar faces, your path takes you through a different section of the ship. Your experience will be somewhat different as you learn a little more about what happens through the decks. The ultimate revelation at the end is the fact you are turned into the very nome that gets eaten by Six in the original game. The community theory is that your discovery in how light hurts the shadowy creatures helped the original protagonist figure out how to use the mirror to defeat The Lady.

Content: Each episode is about the size of a section in the original game. The first episode The Depths shows off how much the kid can swim as you try to avoid The Granny from pulling you underwater. The second episode The Hideaway has you working with nomes as you try to rescue them in any order you prefer. The third episode The Residence has you fighting off shadow kids with your flashlight. There are achievements for opening all 5 floatsams with concept art in each episode, throwing the wooden nome statue into the furnace, and finding a hidden room with an extra book.

Problems: The rocking back-and-forth is more tolerable than the original game and has more impact with how certain objects slide across the room. In a sadistic twist, things get much more difficult trying to run through a room with the X button while you are trying to direct your flashlight at the same time with the right analog stick. 

Little Nightmares II

Release: The game originally released in February 2021. The Enhanced Edition released shortly after in August 2021 with ray-traced reflections on water, improved shadows, and interactive particles like the dust that appears off a rug. Despite the number of players who felt the developers should have added multiplayer support, there are many portions of the game where the second character is simply unavailable. A small segment called The Nome's Attic can be explored in the first chapter of the digital version to receive an exclusive nomes' hat.

Content: The "prequel" of how Six followed Mono through the Pale City expands on all the mechanics they developed in the previous episodes in Secrets of the Maw. Most of the time, your friend will assist you in pushing objects, lifting you over huge walls, and grabbing your hand after jumping over large gaps. Sometimes, she will physically point or lead you where you need to go next. Things get more real than the first game as you use a hammer to shatter crazed porcelain dolls, break literal walking hands that try to grab you, and use your flashlight against mannequins that move when you aren't looking. Meanwhile, you evade the larger creatures that make their alien-likeness more apparent with The Hunter who chases after the two of you with a shotgun, the teacher who can stretch their neck across rooms, and the doctor who crawls on the ceiling. Though, perhaps the scariest encounter is with the thin man that eerily looks like Slenderman coming out of the television set and grabbing Six. Only later do you realize that you become this man when Six (or dark Six) leaves you behind in the television inner space.

Unlockables: Unlike the previous game, the chapter select menu shows how many hidden things you have collected and available in each section. There are 18 "glitches" that are silhouettes of kids left in hidden areas that unlock a secret ending showing what happens to Six afterwards once all are found. You can also obtain 12 hats (or head replacements) that can be interchanged on the main character during your travels. Some of the achievements will require you to perform certain activities while wearing certain hats.  

Problems: While you no longer have to physically carry keys back to open locks, there is some sort of bug that prevents interactable objects from appearing on the screen. In my playthrough, the crank inside the house and the plushie with the key inside never appeared on the screen. Although the first one showed after restarting back to a checkpoint, the other case required a complete chapter restart. At least the amount of progress didn't take too long to walk back. The path ahead is less straightforward when you lose your flashlight and need to use portals to travel across distances.

Little Nightmares III 

Release: The game released on October 2025. Things are a bit different now that you are able to play with a friend but only through online multiplayer (not couch co-op). A different company called Supermassive Games developed the game and Bandai Namco sponsored a ton of merchandise with a premium edition, a couple of dioramas, figurines, mouse pad, and t-shirts. Similar to the original Little Nightmares, they sold an "expansion pass" for two additional chapters that will be released next year. 

Content: While the tone is consistent with previous games in the series, the style feels a little different this time. You will be entering through four sections of the game in a sort of dream universe. There are moments where you will wake up when things become too overwhelming or travel to another place through magic mirrors. You can choose to be the main character who can shoot arrows at frayed rope, small buttons, birds, bottles, and eyeballs. You can also choose to be the imaginary friend who uses a wrench to turn gears, break down walls, press really big buttons, or smash glass. Umbrellas are used mostly in the first part of the game while the flashlight is provided in other areas. You cannot change characters once one is chosen in the beginning of the game, but the other character will perform actions when their part is required to make any progress if you are playing alone. The antagonists this time include a giant baby, a candy factor supervisor, a carnival puppeteer, and the head of the institute.

Achievements: All the costumes are available from the beginning. You don't need to wear specific ones like in Little Nightmares II, but there are similar activities that can be completed like hugging nomes, shooting at all the birds, popping balloons, playing mini-games, collecting all the dolls, breaking all the statues, and finding all the ghosts. There is no secret ending.

Options: The amount of settings available that you can change in the main menu are really staggering. There are options to change the text for those with dyslexia, add between three color overlays for different types of color-blindness, change how the game highlights certain objects, and change the controls. You can change the costume of either character at any time. The credit sequence at the end can be skipped entirely for once.

Problems: I found it somewhat strange that you were not able to switch characters after starting the game, but there was very little to complain about when it came to your companion keeping up with you. There was a small glitch where the pipes did not burst during a chase sequence (probably because my character wasn't running fast enough) and Alone got stuck inside a bedroom until a restart from checkpoint forced her to appear in the next room. Trying to distinguish what required an arrow or wrench to progress was a little more confusing than I anticipated for in the game.

Summary

Review: The general theme of the games highlight different types of obsessions. Inspired by Studio Ghibli's Spirited Away, the first one is rather self-contained in how people will do things when they are hungry. The second explores the depths of what can happen when television takes control of people's lives. The latest game goes to the extent of literally showing how your reality can break when you are stuck imagining yourself traveling with someone else through fantastical settings. Depending on your perspective, the games can become really tense and show things that will shock the general viewer. In any case, the mechanics and gameplay are rather decent for such short games. I would say there are better games out there to choose from for your entertainment.