It was called “Hunger” and therefore the main driving force There was a feeling of hunger in the game. And although the new work from the Tarsier studio changed during the development process, some details of the original idea remained. For example, endless hunger and the idea of ​​sticking a small, harmless person into the dark big world.

The independent Swedish studio Tarsier is primarily known for its adventure platformers, which include games such as LittleBigPlanet, Statik, Tearaway Unfolded - in general, fans of this genre will not need to introduce such projects in more detail.

Nevertheless, new project called Little Nightmares is both similar and different from previous games. The developers claim that the meaning of their new project was born thanks to two different ideas: a doll's house and a vile feast. Therefore, merging together, the game Little Nightmares was born.

Womb in the Womb

The womb is a creepy, mysterious and incredibly disgusting place where the harmless main character of the game finds herself. You can understand what it is only if you get out of it. From the inside, the Maw looks like a prison, a hellish kitchen and just an abandoned place. But if we rely on the promotional material, then we can say that the Womb is a small underwater city that comes to the surface every few years and welcomes new “guests”. Guests are fat, weak-willed creatures who are obsessed with only one thought - to eat. And yes, it sounds rude, but there is no other way to describe it: all these “guests” are disgusting, and what they eat is simply creepy.

“The slippers are obviously too big for the heroine, but for this comrade they are just right.”

There are more monsters surrounded by Six than in any ordinary house - it’s not every day that a feast is held! Moreover, the most harmless of these monsters are “leeches”. They will always try to strangle a little girl in cold blood, of course, if they catch up. The huge and clumsy friends of the local cook will instantly send Six to dismemberment, and the long-armed Watchman will best case scenario will put him in a cage with other lifeless “specimens”.

So, in addition to guests, staff and the unknown Mistress, there are also Nomes - funny, cute and harmless little creatures with caps on their heads, which you need to look for and simply hug during the passage. The game won’t tell you why to do this, but apparently it’s important. The rest, as they say, is up to you to figure out.

However, you shouldn’t be surprised by such a presentation of the plot, because it won’t tell you anything at all: how fashionable it has become today - you’ll have to figure everything out on your own. In part, Little Nightmares in this regard is similar to Inside or even, where the same atmosphere of mystery and constant danger is maintained. In such games, it seems that now the points of insight will accumulate and everything will fall into place, but no, this will not happen.

“There will be plenty of terrible places in Little Nightmares. Here, for example, is a place with shoes from the less fortunate prisoners of the Maw.”

The world of the Womb is more reminiscent of the world or city of Rapture from the series. As for the style, it is again more reminiscent of the no less gloomy Inside. Therefore, a significant part of the game will have to be spent in gloomy and terribly colored locations, where the only bright light is the yellow cloak of the main character. However, like the scarlet shirt of the boy from. After all, even the layout of these games has similar features: the presented world is divided into pieces, like some kind of doll's house.

“Perhaps this is some kind of allusion to modern society, which endlessly consumes something.”

The Swedes from Tarsier went crazy, and instead of bright and kind games for children, they made a horror movie where these same children are eaten and boiled alive in boiling water

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Tarsier is a tiny independent studio located in the Swedish city of Malmo. Over its almost ten-year history, it managed to work on add-ons for the first and second, as well as a re-release for PS4.

Needless to say, many were surprised, to put it mildly, when in May 2014, the authors of cute and good-natured arcade games announced a gloomy game about a little girl surrounded by monsters under the working title Hunger. After some time, everyone happily forgot about this project, until in August 2016 I became interested in it Namco. The game got a publisher, and the name was changed to .

Tells the story of a little starving girl named Six who is unlucky enough to find herself in a terrible surreal underwater complex. The Womb - that’s the name of the complex - is something like an elite resort for fat and ugly creatures who while away their leisure time here eating dishes made from animal meat, fish and human flesh. Therefore, it is not surprising that the poor fellow immediately grabs the opportunity to get out of the Womb as soon as it appears to her. It is a pity that she does not know into what hidden corners of her own consciousness this misadventure, full of dangers, will lead.

It seems that the world of the game itself is resisting the presence of the Sixth, trying to drive the unfortunate woman into a state of panic. In the shadows, some worms are swarming with an eerie squelching sound, water is dripping from the ceiling, and from behind the walls comes a vile grinding sound and the loud monotonous breathing of something large and clearly unfriendly. Each location is scary in its own way, be it a library with dusty bookshelves, or a kitchen littered with heaps of meat and severed fish heads.

Some rooms are flooded with an unpleasant light emanating from lamps that have yellowed over time, while others have to be illuminated by the tiny flame of a small lighter that Six carries in the pocket of her raincoat. I must say, sometimes you don’t want the light to be on at all: it allows you to see the bloody handprints of someone’s hands on the walls or traces of a brutal struggle.

The constantly growing feeling of anxiety and horror is enhanced by the musical accompaniment, which literally screams about the inevitability of a painful death. But only it warns of danger, winning the Sixth the precious seconds necessary for salvation.

And you will have to run and hide often. The monsters are huge and the girl has no chance to somehow resist them. You have to rely on tricks: distract them by dropping clay pots, turn on the dusty TV in the next room at full volume, or simply sit in the shadows, holding your breath, and hope that the creature will simply pass by. If you lose your vigilance or hesitate for a second, the grotesque creature will immediately overtake Six, sending her back to the nearest save. This is a kind of cat and mouse game.

One of the key advantages lies in the fact that she can tell everything about herself without unnecessary words. The game world itself, the terrible creatures inhabiting it, and even the musical score, without any cutscenes or dialogues, tell an interesting and intriguing story. Players will have to unravel and understand many details of the plot themselves, since the game is in no hurry to share details either at the beginning or even at the very end. And after the final credits, you will definitely still have a lot of questions.

The womb. A huge restaurant ship, on the upper decks of which an endless stream of guests, choking, swallows carriages of food rising from the holds. And it’s better for you not to even think about what exactly these dishes are made from. Somewhere in the depths, where there is an ominous kitchen and terrible shadows roam, a lonely tiny girl in a yellow cloak is trying to survive and find the way up, to freedom and truth.

Little Nightmares

Genre puzzle/platformer
Platforms Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One
Developers Tarsier Studios
Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment
Websites little-nightmares.com, Steam

We don't know how Six got into the Maw. Why, unlike other children, she did not give up. Where did she get that yellow raincoat with the hood pulled down over her face? The sixth wakes up on the suitcase that serves as her bed, she is hungry, she is always hungry, but she is almost not afraid, because it is too late to be afraid, she needs to look for a way up.

Through a Prison infested with leeches living in the dark and who knows what horrors. Through the Lair, where a short, blind Watchman with incredibly long arms ending in spider-like fingers settled down. Through the Kitchen, where two sexless Chefs endlessly prepare food from meat cocoons supplied to them by the Caretaker. It's better not to think what it is, it's better not to think. Through the Tavern, where thousands of guests devour the Cooks' concoctions without feeling hungry, without feeling taste, without making distinctions. They will happily devour a little girl, chew fragile bones and suck out sweet brains. They do not care. Up, up. Into the rooms of the gloomy Mistress, who feeds the Maw with her will, which makes the ominous conveyor belt work.

The sixth is a brave girl. She knows what death is. She had to die, and more than once. To crash on the cold floor of the Prison, to receive a fatal electric shock, to fly into the abyss, to fall into the clutches of the Watchman, to be sucked out by leeches, to turn into stone under the gaze of the Watchman's Eye, to be eaten, crushed, absorbed. The sixth knows everything about death. She is afraid of almost nothing except the Hunger that eats her from the inside. She is ready to eat anything to satisfy him.

The womb is the embodiment of childhood nightmares. A frighteningly tangible reification. Fear of the dark, fear of the one who lives under the bed and the one hiding in the closet, fear of loss, falling, loneliness. Perhaps all this no longer scares us as much as it did in childhood, but it still hides somewhere inside, ready to return at the first call.

The sixth will reach the door outside, but will the desired freedom bring her what she was looking for? The path changed her. Hunger made her different. Is she so different from the Guests feasting on the upper deck?

P.S. Undoubtedly, attentive readers will find in Little Nightmares direct analogies with and from the Playdead studio. As with the project from Coldwood Interactive. Well, these are all platformers with puzzle elements, trying to tell the player the story of a very important journey of a little hero, it is not surprising that there are similarities between them. On the other hand, the Swedish Tarsier Studios, the authors of Little Nightmares, have plenty to draw inspiration from; their portfolio includes such unusual projects as LittleBigPlanet 3 and Tearaway Unfolded.

To bookmarks

The game was originally called Hunger, and the main driving force was the feeling of hunger. But during the development process, the work of the Tarsier studio changed: endless hunger and the idea of ​​a small man in a big and scary world remained, but something else was added. Something big and scary. Secret.

Worm in the Belly

From the promotional materials we can find out that it takes place in the Maw - a small underwater city that pops up every few years and welcomes guests. The guests are completely fat, weak-willed creatures, obsessed with only one thing - to eat. It sounds rude, but there is no other way to describe it: they are all as vile as their food is vile. You are what you eat.

It can be assumed that this is an allusion to the modern society of endless consumption.

In addition to the guests, the staff of the Maw and the mysterious Mistress, there are also Nomes - funny little creatures with caps on their heads that you need to find and hug. The game doesn’t tell you why, but it seems to be important.

The game doesn’t tell you anything at all: as is fashionable these days, you have to figure everything out on your own. This is partly why, towards the end, Little Nightmares becomes similar to Bloodborne: no, there are no Lovecraftian monsters and ancient castles, but the atmosphere of mystery and constant danger does not allow you to relax - it seems that you are about to accumulate enough insight points and see vile creatures hanging from the walls .

The womb resembles a dollhouse, so the locals also resemble dolls. Absolutely disgusting dolls

The sixth is dressed in a bright yellow raincoat, while everything around is gray and gloomy. She is Chekhov's little man at the feast of the almighty. None of the nomes is able to overcome themselves and challenge those higher in the food chain. But she can. She is a catalyst. And she's hungry.

The Womb itself is a sort of Funland from The Adventures of Pinocchio, but a thousand times more creepy. Only Six doesn't sit back and turn into an ass. She is constantly hungry, but for some reason she rejects the food that is prepared for the guests of the Maw, preferring to eat rats.

Almost every item in Little Nightmares can be picked up. But if you throw, for example, a bottle right in the cook’s face, nothing will happen

The main ideas of Little Nightmares lie on the surface, but after completion (and the game ends before it even begins), many blank spots remain. There is no powerful subtext here like in Inside, but there is a mystery. Whether someone will be able to solve it, or it will be revealed later, is a question in the additions.

I don’t feel like eating at all after Little Nightmares

Chosen One

First of all, Little Nightmares is compared to Limbo: a defenseless child at the center of the story, danger around every corner, logical puzzles where you need to jump somewhere or drag something.

Some riddles, however, are not built on logic, but rather on dexterity, and this poses problems. Under-jumps, over-jumps, random jumps in the wrong direction - you get the idea. It’s still not like Limbo, here you can move in three dimensions. The girl grabs the ledges not automatically, but with a separate button, as in the ancient parts of Tomb Raider: this does not benefit the game. Especially considering the rare checkpoints in places.

The design of the environment is one of the best in such games, that's just the semantic load most of does not carry objects

But when enemies appear, the game gets more creative. No, you can still accidentally jump in the wrong place and end up on the kitchen table of your brothers-cooks, for example, but in addition to this, stealth with various distracting maneuvers is also involved. The staff of the Maw go about their business, but the moment they see (or hear) the little girl they immediately give chase, so you have to be smart.

Some mysteries unfold in several locations at once: in one - get the key, hide from the cook, slip past, open the lock in another. The variety of interactions with the world also plays a large role in perception. The game world is thought out, every item is in its place, and every move of the Sixth is perfectly felt. Technical solutions Without sticking out, Little Nightmares feels like a cohesive piece, both narratively and mechanically.

I want to know a little more about this world than the game allows

There is not a single line of text in the game - the entire narrative is presented exclusively through the game world, sounds and its characters. The action is staged precisely and elegantly: the dynamics increase gradually, the mechanics replace one another. But the game ends only after accelerating.

Too many questions remain unanswered. The symbol of the game is an eye constantly watching the Sixth, a sort of eye of Sauron, but who is there on the other side? What goals does the Mistress of the Womb pursue? And who is Six: another chosen one who must end injustice? The first five died, are we talking about a cyclical story?

Ultimately, Little Nightmares is just another beautiful and well-crafted horror puzzler that hides simple ideas behind a curtain of mystery without explaining anything to anyone.

Little Nightmares from the Swedish studio Tarsier Studios combines two design ideas. On the one hand, the game is an adventure in a magical but gloomy dollhouse, which looks either like a prison or like hell's kitchen. On the other hand, there is a picture of a terrifying feast. All heroes, even the protagonist, are subject to severe hunger. And if other inhabitants of the Womb (that’s the name of the scene) quench their thirst in unimaginable and disgusting ways, then the girl in the yellow cloak, aka Six, is happy and raw meat, and a randomly found pie.

If you describe the gameplay of Little Nightmares, you only need two words: “hide” and “run”. Nothing more is required from the player. Tarsier Studios did not provide the game with any complex puzzles or riddles. Everything here is done so that Six does not get stuck in one place for a long time. Some “rooms” are completely empty: they do not contain any objects, interesting backdrops or objects that create an atmosphere. They do not carry any semantic meaning and play the role of a corridor in which you only need to run from one door to another. Why such locations are needed is not clear.

Little Nightmares truly brings out humanity. Even a little girl is capable of cruel things. And this inner anger cannot be defeated, you just have to run and hide

Solving puzzles is not the most important part of the game. Much more important is the scenery in which the Sixth runs and hides from dangers, what creatures she encounters and what activities she catches them doing. Little Nightmares can hardly be called indie horror, although perhaps this is the most accurate description of it. It doesn't scare, but it makes the player feel as out of place as possible. To get to the doorknob, a petite girl will have to struggle to drag a chair towards it. And there’s no point in talking about battles with monsters - in any situation, an open battle will end in defeat for the player. Even leeches, which are not that big, are terrifying, and you have to run away from them without looking back. Tension is created due to the leveling of tools for preparing people and stylish background elements.

Someone was already here before the Sixth. And there are many of them.

No one talks in the Maw. And why, it’s unlikely that the local inhabitants can carry on a conversation, and the Sixth simply has no one to talk to. The game tells its story without words, using the language of images, sounds and moods. Tarsier Studios has provided fertile ground for various theories and interpretations of Little Nightmares. Here the very name of the girl in the raincoat is Sixth, and her appearance, different from other “children” of this place, and many other things will allow everyone to understand the plot in their own way. The developers were able to tell a coherent, philosophical and topical story through the atmosphere and environment.

All the puzzles in the game are easy to crack