HORRIBLE DOWN TO THE CORE
Welcome back to the microscopic world of your worst dreamscapes. Little Nightmares II is both a sequel and a prequel to the first game—a sidescrolling horror adventure viewed through a distant, voyeuristic camera. You control a tiny boy named Mono as he navigates environments that echo the twisted logic of the original. This time, the story unfolds in a different region of the same universe: the Pale City, where its inhabitants appear to be controlled by a mysterious signal tower looming at the center.
The playing field has depth, which adds an extra layer of dread to the stealth sections. Crossing a room inhabited by a giant enemy—giant, at least, from your perspective—is a nerve-wracking exercise. You creep beneath furniture or hide behind pottery and books, inching toward the next exit. Detection means panic: run or die.
Occasionally, you’re asked to solve simple, often physics-based puzzles, and the stress escalates quickly when you’re trying to rip boards off a wall blocking your escape while something monstrous closes in. Level design is improved compared to the first game: areas are more compact, backtracking is reduced, and progression is generally clearer. Visual cues are stronger, with cones of light highlighting points of interest in the surrounding darkness.
Before long, you’re joined by a girl companion whose identity is framed as a mystery—though anyone familiar with the first game only needs a glance at the cover art to solve it. She becomes essential to traversal and puzzle-solving, and together you unravel the disturbing logic of this world. Like Ico (2001) and Yorda, your bond grows through shared hardship. And yes, you can hold her hand.
The game is divided into chapters set in distinct locations: forests, a school, a hospital, and more. Grotesque symbolism carries a wordless narrative about the world and your place within it. As before, the Illuminati-like eye returns as a key symbol. Repeated objects—broken televisions, shattered mirrors, prosthetics, teddy bears, a music box—suggest deeper meaning. Empty suits slumped in wooden chairs hint that their owners may have escaped their misery… or met a far worse fate.
New nightmares stalk these environments: a stern teacher whose head stretches endlessly on a worm-like neck; a bloated doctor lurking on the ceiling; living prosthetics scuttling through hospital corridors. The imagery recalls Silent Hill 2, that PS2-era masterpiece which radiated dread with every step.
That’s the Little Nightmares experience I love. The first game was packed with moments like this. Unfortunately, Little Nightmares II rarely delivers the same tension. The encounters exist, but I seldom felt scared or stressed. Stealth takes a backseat, replaced by action sequences—an area where developer Tarsier Studios clearly struggles. The sequel introduces numerous chase scenes and combat encounters against same-sized enemies, including a particularly grueling segment where you must fend off monsters using a flashlight to make them stand still.
The problem isn’t the ideas—it’s the execution. And this may be a Switch-specific issue, but the controls are a complete disaster. An input delay of roughly half a second undermines everything the atmosphere and visual storytelling are trying to accomplish. When survival hinges on split-second reactions, that delay is catastrophic.
Mono’s actions are also unreliable. His animations are sluggish, as if he’s constantly wading through waist-deep water. Actions are context-sensitive, which leads to frequent failure: he’ll refuse to grab a ledge, pick up an object when you meant to run, or do absolutely nothing when precision matters most. The result is that the controls repeatedly shatter immersion at the exact moments the game needs to hold you in its grip.
The low, sideways camera angle works well for hide-and-seek horror but completely sabotages action. Depth perception is poor, leading to countless frustrating deaths. You snag on geometry during chases. You miss narrow planks and fall to your death. You swing a giant axe just short of an enemy, who immediately kills you in return.
I played and reviewed the first game on PS4, and while it shared some of these issues, they were never this severe. Mono’s dreamlike sluggishness may be thematically appropriate—nightmares often make you feel trapped or paralyzed—but nightmares are frightening. Here, that sensation curdles into anger. After failing twenty times using different approaches, you might retry your original plan—only for it to suddenly work for no discernible reason.
Melee combat is the final nail in the coffin. Between poor perspective, input delay, sluggish animations, one-hit deaths, and unforgiving checkpoints, I was forced to replay combat encounters far too many times. From that point on, the game never fully recovered.
The flashlight mechanics were even worse. Controls seemed inconsistent: pushing the stick forward might aim the beam into the room—or straight up at the ceiling. Enemies often continued moving long after being illuminated, closing in just enough to kill me the moment I adjusted my aim. From there, frustration snowballed into near-constant derailment.
Listen—I get it. I understand the intent. Like Silent Hill 2, this is a game meant to feel trapped inside a nightmare, where movement is heavy and uncooperative. But one or two sequences would have sufficed. Instead, this design philosophy infects well over half the game.
I love the atmospheric storytelling, the creature design, and the bold visual direction. The silence and distorted soundscape reinforce the unease beautifully. Conceptually, Little Nightmares II is brilliant. But those merits fail to extinguish my accumulated rage, and that rage completely erodes the dread and sorrow the narrative aims to evoke.
The game ends with a powerful, shocking finale that reframes the first entry in an intriguing way. Unfortunately, after countless unnecessary deaths, I watched that ending in a state of emotional exhaustion, with no real investment left in any of the characters. My advice? Watch a playthrough—or try a different platform—rather than playing the Switch version. You’ll probably care more that way.
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