Without one, you’re responsible not just for your own life, but that of another person. In a sense it's disappointing, but with a friend, you could necessarily take comfort in the distance afforded by a second brain helping you with the puzzles and traversal.
You'd think that this would mean some multiplayer was in store, but in an interesting wrinkle, this isn't the case. That may be contentious, as it could be reasonably argued that the more tiresome, laboured elements of the thing are part and parcel with the game’s intent and the player’s crucial sense of vulnerability. The “cinematic platformer”, though, carries with it some mechanical baggage that the genre has never been able to get past. The sense of place, in fact, is as convincing as something like the original Oddworld games all the way back on the original PlayStation, with similarly weighty, panicked gameplay to the point that we’d be prepared to call Little Nightmares something of a spiritual successor to the adventures of Abe. Ever been somewhere you know you shouldn’t? Fear and curiosity can entwine themselves into intoxicating shapes, dancing in your guts as you push ever forward into the dark, knowing that the consequences of your being discovered will most likely be dire and terrible? That’s what Little Nightmares II goes for, and it is almost entirely successful in these ambitions.
