Little Nightmares II
Information
Developers: Tarsier studios and supermassive games
Publisher: Bandai Namco entertainment
Platforms: Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox one, Xbox series X/S, and PC.
Release date: February 11 2021
Genre: Adventure Puzzle Platform Thriller.
Game Summary: Little Nightmares II (also stylized Little Nightmares 2) follows Mono, a young boy who wears a paper bag over his head, as he navigates a distorted world corrupted by a mysterious transmission. The story begins with Mono waking up in a dark forest and making his way through eerie environments filled with traps and monstrous figures. He eventually finds Six, the raincoat-wearing girl from the first game, imprisoned by the Hunter. After helping her escape, the two travel together toward the Pale City, a sprawling metropolis under the influence of the Transmission Tower, which emits hypnotic signals through televisions. Throughout their journey, Mono and Six encounter grotesque enemies, including the Teacher, who stretches her neck unnaturally long to catch them, and the Doctor, who crawls across ceilings in a hospital full of living mannequins. Mono discovers he has the ability to interact with televisions, using them to teleport and later confront the source of the Transmission. In the game’s climax, Mono faces the Thin Man, a spectral figure who represents a distorted version of himself. After defeating him, Mono reaches the signal Tower, where Six lets Mono fall into the void as the Tower consumes him. Time passes, and Mono becomes the Thin Man, trapped in an endless cycle.
Playthrough: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gKCvphbCpPE
Autoethnographic Component
While playing the game, an aspect that felt difficult to work around is how slowly the main character reacts to inputs, which made some of the puzzle sections difficult. The puzzles were surprisingly difficult to solve, with many of them having little to no hints as to how to progress to the next section. Luckily, the game uses environmental hints that make the answer more obvious once the player explores the areas more thoroughly. We played in the same room taking turns with the controller, so we were able to solve the puzzles more easily with two perspectives working together. On a couple puzzles we needed the help of guides such as IGN’s walkthrough (“The School”).
Although the slow reaction time is difficult, it felt intentional. Unlike many video games, you rarely have the ability to fight back. During the rare opportunities you do have the ability, the reaction time is extremely slow. For example, within the school setting mono has access to a hammer. To him, this hammer is heavy. The timing for when you must use it and shatter the china-doll like children is extremely meticulous. Although frustrating at times it feels true to the game's narrative. You are a small child with limited speed and strength. If you are not reacting a long while before the threat is imminent, you will miss.
This game is important to me (Cesar) because as a teen I would watch YouTube playthroughs of the original Little Nightmares. The game holds a lot of nostalgia. Little Nightmares 2 has many elements that I find scarier than the first game, such as the mannequins in the hospital area. The extreme size difference between the main character and the surrounding world makes the scary elements even scarier. The game captures what it feels like to see the world from the point of view of a child, and how elements from day-to-day life that we now think of as normal can be quite intimidating to someone so young. I remember vividly being scared of weird shapes in the dark as a child, and how big they felt. The hospital area in particular evoked this feeling from me, as I was looking at every shadow for movement, and every still mannequin could spring to life and chase me down.
I (Kate), have always been drawn to the juxtaposition of cute and scary. As a child, my favourite book was “Where the wild things are” by Maurice Sendak. This influence has had a lasting effect on me, so themes of children living amongst monsters always sparks interest. I appreciate the game's dark surrealism, while integrating light hearted and sweet moments throughout its narrative. An example is the ability of the main characters Mono and Six to hold hands and call out to one another. Because the decision to hold hands wasn't mandatory, it felt intimate. Thoughtful touches like this is what made Six’s betrayal to Mono so much more impactful. It felt like a personal betrayal. The game's artistic consistency stands out to me as one of the most successful I have experienced. The monstrous characters within this game have exaggerated features, whereas mono and six are the only character that remains proportionate. As an artist who particularly loves character design, these features stand out and inspire me. I enjoy taking note of the artistic decisions made in this game in order to incorporate cute characters that don't seem out of place in a decaying world.
Themes and Connections to Scholarship
Introduction
Little Nightmares 2 uses non-verbal storytelling, leaving a large gap between in-game narrative and player experience. Allowing players to fill in their own interpretations through environmental storytelling and visual language gives them a sense of agency in the storytelling process. Within this framework of visual and environmental non-verbal storytelling, the largest recurring motif is the use of televisions as a narrative tool. Our interpretation of this message is one that carries over from the first game: consumerism as horror - more specifically in the sequel, obsession with technology and overconsumption of media.
Technology and Consumerism
Zara Zimbardo claims, “it is common to hear people complain ‘I feel like a zombie’ after hours staring at a television or screen…” (2014, 270). The dissociation caused by overconsumption of media is personified as grotesque zombie-like creatures known in the game as “The Viewers.” In the city area of the game, there is a broadcasting tower that seems to be the source of the transmission to all TVs - “The Tower” is the force causing the city that Little Nightmares 2 takes place in to be warped beyond repair. The most clearly affected group are the “Viewers,” horribly twisted humanoids transfixed on the broadcast, going so far as to throw themselves off buildings to get closer to the source. The game is clearly making a parallel to our own reality, where it is all too common to see people obsessed with popular culture. Society at large has become transfixed by an online presence and addiction to digital media that can lead to a lost sense of self. Similar to “The Viewers,” we see this in social media with the pressure to curate an idealized online persona, to the detriment of our real lives. In day-to-day interactions we often reach for the comfort of our phones rather than engage with the people around us. Gaming itself can even become all-encompassing - an entire life lived, friendships and identities formed - without ever having to leave the comforts of home.
On the topic of zombification, McNally compares the state of consumerism more broadly in late-stage capitalism to a state of zombification. The comparison between zombies and capitalism has been made by many authors, and “The Viewers” exemplify this comparison quite literally. The zombified consumer mindlessly intakes commodities and content at the behest of those in power. “The Viewers” are only found close to the Signal Tower, the heart of the City area. They are the desired outcome of the Tower, and of consumerism in real life. Mindless drones, to flock to the next product of our consumption.
Topophobia
Environmental story-telling is a large part of the progression and narrative of the game. The game has four main areas: the woods, the school, the hospital, and the city proper. As Mono and Six make their way toward the the Tower, they are also moving closer and closer to the beating heart of society and consumerism. There is a notable increase in the horrific elements of the enemy and monster designs the closer to the Tower they get. The Hunter, the tutorial area enemy, is basically a normal man with a shotgun and a litany of traps. The Viewers and the Thin Man, however, are horribly misshapen otherworldly creatures with supernatural powers. This being said, all of them are scary, just in their own ways. The use of a natural setting for the more grounded enemy of the Hunter makes him both more familiar, and less comforting. He is less fantastical, and therefore more realistic in his horror. Framing a backwater hunter that (presumably) eats people as more grounded relies on what Thurgill describes as “folk horror”. Basically, folk horror is reliant on the fear that consumerist city-dwellers have for those who live in insular, rural, pseudo-homogenized communities away from the ‘civility’ of modernity. The fear was first made popular in folk-horror and backwater-horror movies of the 1970s like Deliverance (1972), Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Wicker Man (1973). This fear is based on the lack of understanding (the basis for any fear) people living in cities have for a more natural way of life outside the confines of capitalist megastructures, largely due to harmful stereotypes. It became more popular as people moved away from the sites of production and toward the sites of consumption over the span of the 20th century.
Body Horror
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A consistent theme of the Little Nightmares franchise is monsters that are distinctly humanoid but fall within the uncanny valley of body horror. Cruz interprets body horror as a biological phenomenon, which will be helpful for explaining the monsters in this game. There are several notable examples, including the Teacher, the Doctor, the Thin Man, and at the end of the game, the altered form of Six. The teacher is the first example, sporting a disturbingly long neck that can extend and retract. She uses this ability to send her head exploring around the environment to hunt down the player. This monster takes advantage of the fact that most large enemies cannot follow you or find you in small places and subverts that expectation by presenting a horrific snake-like predator. The Doctor is a larva-like giant man who seems to be either extremely overweight or wearing the loose skins of other people. His physical similarities to a maggot make for a disgusting visual, while the secondary impact of him wearing another person’s skin deepens the dread. He would be scary enough like this were it not also for the fact that he crawls around on the ceiling like an animal. The Thin Man is disproportionately tall and skinny, with long limbs. This is not inherently disgusting or creepy, but it is this in tandem with his eerie stillness that makes him unsettling. He does not need to rush after you, he only need take a few steps. The elongated nature of his extremities also creates a sense of unease, as he is not quite what we expect to see from a mostly normal looking silhouette. The best example of body horror in the game, however, is the metamorphosis that Six undergoes in the final chapter. Cruz refers to body horror as a “gruesome disregard for the human body” and this is most evident in the way Six has been altered by the Tower (or the Thin Man depending on interpretation). She is enlarged, similar now in size to the very monsters she had been running from. Her arms are now much longer than her legs, and they are asymmetrically broken into zig-zag shapes to accommodate a crawling, limping gait. She no longer recognizes Mono as her friend, and she can only communicate with pained screeches. This version of Six is a fate worse than death, a core element of body horror monsters. There are theories online that this metamorphosis came at a cost to Six’s humanity, and that is why she betrays Mono at the end of the game.
“Cuteness” in Horror
Little Nightmares 2 is a unique horror game as it doesn't rely solely on its dark distorted world and monstrous creatures to spark fear, but rather the contrast of these elements to the cuteness of the protagonists to pull at the heartstrings of the player. It invokes a sense of protectiveness and worry. The coexistence of these elements is what creates a sense of uneasiness within the gameplay.
Mono and Six are created with soft pallets and gentle features. They are extremely small in contrast to a massive world around them. Heather Blakey (2025) discusses Sianne Ngai's description of cuteness as an "aestheticization of powerlessness.” The game plays upon this concept, intentionally using a distorted perspective of scale to highlight the characters' vulnerabilities. Navigating simple everyday objects becomes a part of the horror. These objects that typically are not terrifying, such as a television or table, lose their intended purpose and become objects of horror. A table becomes a place to hide under to escape a monster. A television is a monster in of itself. To an adult they are extraordinarily mundane, but to a child they become scary. The universe can be read as an adult society through the lens of innocence. The adults are monstrous zombies who are either trying to attack and harm Mono and Six, or simply just ignore them while they struggle.
The juxtaposition of cuteness and horror is more than just the visual language of the game. It is at its core what the game is about. A metaphor to a universal memory. Being a child trying to navigate a world you can not yet understand. Mono and Six's cute character design represents innocence in a dark and dreary world determined to destroy it.
Citations
Blakey, Heather. 2025. “Cute, Interesting, Zany Ghosts: Examining Aesthetic Experience of Ghosts in Animal Crossing: New Horizons, Genshin Impact and Hades.” The Occult, 7–32. Falmouth, UK: Revenant.
Cruz, Ronald Allan Lopez. 2012. “Mutations and Metamorphoses: Body Horror Is Biological Horror.” Journal of Popular Film and Television 40 (4): 160–68. doi:10.1080/01956051.2012.654521.
Deliverance. Directed by John Boorman, performances by Jon Voight, Burt Reynolds, Ned Beatty, and Ronny Cox, Warner Bros., 1972.
Majoros, Emma. “Little Nightmares 2: 10 Hidden Messages & Secret Meanings.” Game Rant, Game Rant, 22 Feb. 2021, gamerant.com/little-nightmares-2-hidden-messages-secret-meanings/?utm_.
Mcnally, David . “The Monsters of Capitalism.” Tribunemag.co.uk, 2021, tribunemag.co.uk/2021/10/halloween-monsters-vampire-zombie-karl-marx-haiti-history/?utm. Accessed 21 Oct. 2025.
“The School.” IGN Wikis – Little Nightmares II, IGN Entertainment, www.ign.com/wikis/little-nightmares-2/The_School. Accessed 29 Oct. 2025.
Thurgill, James. “A Fear of the Folk: On Topophobia and the Horror of Rural Landscapes.” Revenant: Critical and Creative Studies of the Supernatural, vol. 5, March 2020, pp. 33-56.
Texas Chain Saw Massacre, The. Directed by Tobe Hooper, performances by Marilyn Burns, Paul A. Partain, Edwin Neal, Jim Siedow, and Gunnar Hansen, Vortex, Inc., 1974.
Wicker Man, The. Directed by Robin Hardy, performances by Edward Woodward, Christopher Lee, and Britt Ekland, British Lion Films, 1973.
Wiki, Contributors to Little Nightmares. “The Viewers.” Little Nightmares Wiki, Fandom, Inc., littlenightmares.fandom.com/wiki/The_Viewers?utm_. Accessed 28 Sept. 2025.
Zimbardo, Zara. 2014. “It Is Easier to Imagine the Zombie Apocalypse than to Imagine the End of Capitalism.” Censored 2015: Inspiring We the People, San Francisco: Project Censored.
AI Disclosure & Appendix
There has been no use of generative AI in this Wiki entry.