With the eventual release of Little Nightmares III and REANIMAL coming out this year, I will cover the genius of the previous two releases and what I’m looking forward to with the new releases. 

Before I start, there’s something to keep in mind for the new releases. Little Nightmares III is not made by the same studio that created the first two. They were created by Tarsier Studios, and REANIMAL is going to be their latest game in their collection. They have departed from the Little Nightmares franchise to create a new kind of horror for players to enjoy. Little Nightmares III is being made by Supermassive Games, the same studio responsible for works like Until Dawn and many other choice based games like their Dark Anthology series. However, they did collaborate with Tarsier Studios for Little Nightmares II, so it’s not their first rodeo working on Little Nightmares.

Little Nightmares was iconic in its own right. While not my favorite of the released duo out so far, I really appreciate where this wordless story takes us, especially in retrospect of the second game, given it’s the most recent plotline chronologically in Six’s story and what she did right before we met her. In the second game, it’s the prequel so we first sorta found out her origin, without knowing it’s her for a while until she finds her iconic yellow coat. To make it easier to explain the story, we’ll start with the prequel. 

Little Nightmares II

We play as Mono, a little boy with a brown paper bag on his head, and we reach a cabin in the woods where he finds Six hiding in the basement from the murderous hunter. They team up for the rest of the story, helping each other through each horror, and Mono saving her at one point when she’s kidnapped by a group of live porcelain children. 

Throughout the story, Mono is attracted to the tv static and eventually unleashes whom I argue is the main antagonist of this game, the mysterious shadow hat man. Curiously, if you get captured by him, you do restart the last save point, but he does not kill you like other enemies do. He simply catches you. 

And then the part of the game that left me in shock the first time I played the game; when Mono and Six are escaping a crumbling building and Six catches you after a large jump, something they did for each other the entire game. However, this time, she lets him go and runs away. That’s not the only surprise twist though. Mono doesn’t die. Instead, he’s trapped in a sort of gory hell and finds a chair and never leaves it. Eventually, he turns into the shadow man that’s been chasing you, creating a loop where Mono can never leave, and the shadow man might have only been trying to capture you throughout the game to save you from Six, and suffering the same fate over and over. At the very end, you get a glimpse of Six in the large boat where you start the first game in, and she’s hungry.

Little Nightmares

The plot of the first game is you play as Six. This has fascinated me since the prequel came out. It recontextualizes Six and her part in the horrors. Before, we just knew her as a hungry girl trying to escape the Maw. Now, we know she left Mono to die right before and it perhaps changes how you feel about her. So, you play as Six throughout the game, escaping horrors you’ve already seen if you played the game before the prequel came out. Then Six encounters the lady with magic. Overcome with hunger, Six kills her and absorbs her magic as a result. 

However, while I did like Mono and find his story more tragic, it’s important to remember that Six is not inherently evil. She’s also a product of her environment in this twisted nightmare world. She’s simply doing everything she can to stay alive. 

Now for the upcoming third game. I’m particularly excited for both, even if REANIMAL is likely a departure from the franchise. Little Nightmares III has the ability to be co-op or play alone as Low and Alone, two friends trying to escape Nowhere. I’m not sure if this game will have any reference from the previous games, much like how the first two directly tie in with each other. But I’d love to see if perhaps Six comes back with her newfound magic powers and becomes one of the monsters she tried desperately to escape from. She could become an enemy Low and Alone must either fight or evade. 

As for REANIMAL, I fully expect this one to be unrelated to the Little Nightmares franchise but I mention it at all because the game has the same eerie horror the franchise is known for. This is also a co-op game, playing as young siblings who are trying to rescue their friends and escape a hellish island. I don’t expect any direct tie-ins to their beloved previous franchise, but I’d love some Easter eggs throughout the game hinting at Little Nightmares. Given it has a similar idea of children in a horror world, I would be surprised if they don’t indulge in fun hints for fans. However, I could be wrong in my predictions. 

Horror is not my favorite genre, I’ll be the first to admit, but something about this series just hits in the right way for me. It’s not relying on jumpscares or cheap tricks to be scary. It’s the idea of being so small and helpless in a world you’re not meant to be in, but have to survive. I consider it a real treat to have two games with this premise coming out (hopefully) this year and I’ll certainly revisit them in a future article to see if I was right about my guesses and discuss theories.