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Neuschwanderer's Little Nightmares (PC)
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| [August 31, 2018 01:10:27 PM]
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Picking back up from where I left off I found out that I was not in fact done with creepy long arm dude. Instead I had to run through the vents while he was reaching for me through the cracks. Interestingly enough it was after this that you are put into your final confrontation with the long-armed monster where I was actually interested in the game play mechanics that were chosen here. The challenge for them being how to do you fight against something when you have made the game where your only controls are to move and grab things. So, I was quite impressed when they set up this encounter where your first idea would be to climb and run away, but then you can see that the bars of the cage bend and it may give you the idea, for me it took a while, to pull the cage bars and as logic would have it you basically disarm the long-armed monster.
However, you’re not free as the next scene give you a glimpse of the next monster you have to face off against, which by the looks of him and the fact there are meat hooks going in his direction I can only assume is a cook. Of which I instantly predicted that I was going to see some humans either being stored away like raw meet in a freezer or I was going to literally see these people getting used as cooking ingredients. What I saw next though felt a bit like foreshadowing that you are getting more and more monstrous with how you get food for yourself, as this time when we get hungry we latterly kill a rat which was foreshadowed in the times that we got hungry the last time. As I got closer to the area that reminded me of a food cafeteria I was just waiting to see what your first encounter with the cook would be like. Following the blood on the floor to the kitchen I saw the big boy himself who isn’t as blind and easy to dodge as the blind one. He caught me very quickly and instantly went about cooking me up. After sneaking past the cook and climbing into the rafters I found out that now there were two cooks that I had to evade for the next part of this game. Which from an artistic standpoint it’s interesting how they chose to almost make them look like twins and make the connection even greater by making them look like two halves of the same monster. I continued to progress until I reached the point where you are tasked with creating a sausage link long enough to swing into the next area with. Which posed the question, was I going to have to put a body into the sausage grinder to get to the next level? Luckily, I didn’t have to do that, but as I got into the next area I got to do the same old song and dance with the monster’s brother. This one was actually grinding one of the human like things in a grinder, but at this point I was getting a little desensitized to the whole feel of the human meat processing plant vibe. My last run against the cooks was hoping onto the meat hooks to safety which was really fun actually cause of the horror elements of having no other options but to run away as fast as I possibly could. Once I was out and away I got the achievement for the kitchen level and I was out of there.
For the Kitchen level I felt like a lot of the gameplay was the same for each cook. Honestly speaking, looking at what the game had been thus far just from mechanics alone it was a large amount of repetition without many new mechanics being added in per level. With the long arm guy it introduced the idea of distracting the monster with an item that made a noise, but not much of anything new for the cooks. The only thing that I could think was possibly added was having to go around the zone to find multiple items to solve the puzzle like with the sausage grinder, but with it only being used that one time I was questioning if it was just that one puzzle or an attempt at another mechanic.
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| [August 29, 2018 11:00:33 PM]
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Once I was back in the game I crossed the chasm and continued on until I reached the hangman’s noose. Once again only after a couple minutes of playing the game and there is another reference to suicide. At this point I was starting to wonder if the entire creepy factor of the game was going to be a huge reference where suicide was the topic of reflection. It made me think back to all the children in the beds and the cafeteria and think if they are all stuck there until only a few will grow into adulthood at which point the reality of whatever is happening to them causes them to kill themselves vs continuing their lives in this prison ship like thing.
Funny enough after getting past this room to the stairs my question was answered at least in part by finding out that the area I came from was indeed a prison. I climbed the stairs until I got to the top and found a room where the wall had a swing out room where you needed a key. I flipped down the bed and was partially surprised, but at this point not greatly, to find that the bed included straps to hold whoever was sleeping down. I also noticed how much bigger everything was compared to me and I started to think that either I was like the little people running around or perhaps me and the creatures around me, were not entirely human. I kept playing for a while after this until I reached more pipes and found myself once again doubling over due to hunger pains. When I continued down the path that ended in the cage I knew it was a trap and that I was going to be taken away as soon as I ate that meat. It really put everything into perspective that I was going to be the mouse in this giant place where the monster was probably going to chase me down and kill me. Of which I was totally correct as I was lifted away by the long-armed dude.
So, when I got out of the cage and found the monster this was the point where the ethically questionable stuff really started to show itself. I saw the monster wrapping up kids and attaching them to meat hooks like he was on an assembly line. Running away from the monster I then found the room where it was just filled with children’s shoes and the first thought that I had is that whatever is going on here, my guess was a children food farm or something, was on scale with the holocaust or some other mass killing. It was very grim to keep showing very nightmarish images and to raise some questions for myself on just how dark this game was going to get. The rest of the time that I played the game was getting away from mr long arms until I got past the part of the level where you distract him with the TV. Throughout the entire ordeal though it gave me time to think about the gameplay instead of the many little nightmares I was seeing, see what I did there, and I was fairly impressed with the fact that it doesn’t teach you outright that standing on the carpet doesn’t make noise while standing on the wood will. I was impressed on this very subtle yet effective way to teach a game mechanic. After I cleared the T.V puzzle I put the game down now that I was away from the long armed blind monstrosity.
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| [August 28, 2018 11:08:37 PM]
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Little Nightmares is a game set in a mysterious unknown ship or otherwise dark area with no information given about the player, objective, or purpose really. Gameplay is very simple being a “walk right to progress” style game with basic levels of interaction such as moving objects and climbing onto things.
My first thoughts while playing the game was initially why the hell was I seemingly birthed out of a carry-on case, but that was quickly overruled by the desire to progress in the game and find out who the masked figure in the opening scene was. Based off of the first images of the main protagonist I assume and yourself the game has a very dark feeling like you’re going against a monster in disguise as a human kind of vibe going on. The first reactions that I had on learning that you could open up a little lighter was that this game was going to shut you into many tight dark rooms and expect you to feel your way through which I wasn’t too hyped about honestly. I enjoy games that I can figure out with some time where I need to go and walking around in pitch blackness tends to get on my nerves. So, at this point I wasn’t all too excited about that possible game mechanics, which made sense to me because it was a horror game to my understanding. What made me happy though was all the little short people with hats running around the rooms that gave the game a bit of a chipper note that at least I wasn’t alone against what ever horrors the game would pit me against.
What I was totally not expecting though was to run into the man who had hung himself. This was the first point in the game that I understood why people recommended this game as a topic of discussion. At first, I thought it was someone who had left clothes to dry or something, but as soon as I saw the chair I realized my mistake. It was also at this point that I thought it was really dark of the designers to use this kind of visual key as the element to highlight the fact that you need to use the chair to reach the switch. Ethically I was curious on the moral implications of using suicide as a means to draw the players attention to a point in the room. But, more pressing than that I was interested in whether the game was going to have this ethical grey area on the kind of horror this game would have in it. Was I about to walk into a mess of people who were driven made upon this ship that was taken over by the masked lady, was it going to be a twist where the masked lady was something other than a villain; I was confused, but curious all the same. What more or less answered my question after this event was the long armed, huge headed, monster that I encountered shortly after. Once I saw that creeper with the long arms I had a good idea that this game was going to be running away from abomination horrors and that the masked lady was probably going to be the most twisted of them all. But, to add flavor to the game I was probably going to see a bunch of ethically questionable imagery along with all these creepy monsters as well. Of which I was somewhat correct. Not completely as the next questionable thing I saw was the monster walking through a room filled with sleeping children, but it did make me more curious as to what kind of happenings where going on here and how these children were being used and for what they were being used for was.
After about 30 minutes of gameplay I was just about to clime into the next area after riding the moving chain across the room and to add to the rest of my curiosity I was trying to decide if the cages were for the little hood people, the kids, or something else entirely. The first half hour of this game left me with waaaay more questions than answers, of which there were none, and left me waiting for the next time playing the game to hopefully get some answers to all these questions I had.
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Neuschwanderer's Little Nightmares (PC)
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Current Status: Playing
GameLog started on: Tuesday 28 August, 2018
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