Why Little Nightmares is my FAVORITE Horror Series

back when little nightmares 3 was planned to release this year, I wanted to cover the trilogy and talk about why its my favorite horror series, well... it got delayed, but that wont stop me!
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[@AstralKat]

Thanks so much for watching everyone! what do you love about little nightmares? and are you excited for the third game?

[@brendenrichardson7109]

Little Nightmares is such a cool series to me because it hits this perfect sweet spot of creeping dread, oppressive atmosphere, and this... unique brand of visceral, almost primal fear when you're actually in real danger. It feels like you're at the bottom of the food chain and are surrounded by apex predators. You're the most delicious morsel of food in the world surrounded by people with unending hunger. You are the Rat in the kitchen. And that's something no other game really does imo. On top of that, the environments and world building of these games is immaculate. Every new area feels breathtaking and suffocating at the same time. The Guests chasing after you specifically to get a bite when they already have all the food a person could ever want right in front of them is an utterly harrowing realization, that the game pulls off masterfully. Super excited to see where 3 takes things, and thanks as always for the amazing content!

[@angeldoyle859]

the concept of a Little nightmares 3 terrifies me because of how big of a step up 2 was from 1 in terms of monsted design, if 3 follows the same trend... I'm not gonna be sleeping for a while in the best way

[@randomdaydreamer9970]

it's pretty interesting hearing your thoughts on this series. especially since when i played the game myself i didnt really get the feelings you describe, ive found this to be pretty common with youtube essays on games or shows or whatever. where the way it's described in the video, although what is being described sounds like something id love, the actual game i played or show i watched didnt evoke the feelings described by the youtuber.
personally, i have very little against little nightmares. i dont hate the series, i think a lot of it is really cool, in fact, i like a lot of it. it's just that it clearly didnt resonate with me in the same way it did you. and yes, i think there's things the games couldve done better. shouldve done better.
the way you describe the enemies makes them sound terrifying, but when i actually played the first game, back when i was a kid, even, i didnt really find them scary in the slightest. this isnt me doing a 'i was such a brave kid' sort of thing, i was a pretty easy to scare kid, i was scared of fnaf games for fuck's sake.
and i think the reason so many of them fell flat for me isnt because i dont think the points made in this video are well made points, they are, rather, it's about a few flaws with the game's design which led to them being pretty basic experiences for me, especially gameplaywise.
although the idea of not knowing what to expect from an enemy is really cool, all tension gets killed when you're killed for the first time and realize you just respawn 4 steps away and now need to see that exact same creepy surprise again for as many times as it takes for you to get through without dying. it kinda ruins everything.
death is actually a very big flaw i find with these games. i remember many times where the game just kills you in ways that couldnt be seen coming and then just puts you back right before them. it would sometimes feel like i was playing a mario maker troll level, but at least in those the unfair deaths are funny.
i remember one spot in particular that really frustrated me as a kid. it was that chase sequence with the guests, or whatever they're called. the hunger guys that chase you down the corridor. that segment was pretty cool, but it wasnt cool on the 14th time. you see, at the very end of that chase sequence i remember this little thing im supposed to grab onto to swing down to safety. and i remember missing this thing SO many times. and EVERY time id get sent back to the start of the chase sequence. this wasnt even me dying from a monster or anything, i was just trying to grab this goddamn grabby thing, im pretty sure it expected me to know the exact place to jump to grab it in the game's 3d environment, but it's pretty difficult to tell how far or close away from the camera something in a 3d environment is when that 3d environment is framed in a way that a 2d platformer usually would be.
it's not even as if i experienced what you described the first time round but then the segments were suddenly bad the second time i played through them. the way this game makes it so easy to die, and not just from monsters, but from ridiculous insignificant things that have no baring on the game's themes nor play into the gameplay in any unique way, it enforces the idea that you, as the player, are safe. a constant reminder that this is just a game, a game where death is meaningless, a game with no consequences for your choices, for your deaths, for anything, really. and this prevented any threats to feel, well, threatening to me. because i knew if a random hand suddenly burst out of a vent and snatched me, time would rewind to 5 seconds ago when i wasnt snatched, and i could do this again without being snatched. would you be scared of anything in life if anytime something bad happened to you time just immediately rewound to before it happened and at a point where you can easily just not let that bad thing happen?
and you know, other horror games do this too. most mascot horror does, for example. poppy playtime, although i dont think it's very scary, i still find it scarier than this. the same with fnaf, even. and i think it comes down to another factor. it's not just that the consequences of death are too shallow, it's that you're going to be dying a lot in these games. this isn't just me being bad at a game, ive seen playthroughs, i know just how much people die in this game. even the developers know, it's why they made the consequences for death so low., because if it sent you back to the start of the whole chapter or something you'd be here for a long time. and it's not just the game being easy to die in, it's as said before, the game basically forcing certain deaths. i dont have the greatest memory of these games, but i can remember a fair few obstacles in these games that aren't passed with skill, but simply with knowing what's coming. and that's a terrible idea for a game with little consequence for death.
the difference between poppy playtime's minor death consequences and little nightmares' is that poppy playtime doesnt have any obstacles that require you know what's coming to avoid, and the game isn't built in a way that you'd expect the average player to be dying a lot to. so the stakes still feel real due to the fact that dying is more of a rare thing. it's similar with fnaf but actually, fnaf has the exact same problem as little nightmares. but it also avoids the problems little nightmares has. it does both. somehow. it's why the early nights of the games are the ones you typically see people be scared of, if they're scared at all. it's because the early nights of the game aren't difficult to the point that you'd be dying an absurd amount of times, it's because in the early nights of the game you may not have even died yet. but then all that tension is thrown out the window during the later nights when the difficulty spikes dramatically and the game becomes a slog of repeatedly trying to avoid the same obstacles over and over, dying over and over, being jumpscared over and over. similar to the entirety of little nightmares.
and coming back to platformers again, this is probably going to sound harsh to hear, but when i played the first game the impression i got of the game design was generic platformer levels with a fresh paint of horror. the level design just doesnt have much going for it to me, the gameplay does feel like it has a unique identity, dont get me wrong. i dont even think the level design is particularly bad, it's alright. it's just that to me at least, very little of it feels like it's revolved around horror. to me at least, so much of the horror genre in video games is about designing a gameplay experience to frighten the player in some way or another. not every game does this, and i think that's okay, omori doesnt do this much, but omori is more of a narrative experience than anything. but despite all the chase sequences and stalker characters, i just rarely felt like the gameplay was built around horror. ive seen chase sequences in rayman games, those arent unique to horror. ive even seen stalker enemies in rayman. what i personally look for in horror gameplay is something more akin to resident evil, or fnaf, or any other unique kind of gameplay that specifically tries to evoke a feeling of horror. when i play little nightmares, it feels closer to celeste to me than any other horror game. and the death mechanics dont help with that.
sure, it doesnt have nearly as many movement options as celeste, you're not as free. and it has more enemies than in celeste. but it's still the same routine of playing pretty basic platformer levels split into smaller segments, and sometimes playing them again, and again, until you finally beat it. both have very simply controls and no visible player stats to take up the screen. sometimes playing little nightmares felt like playing a more annoying and less fun version of celeste.
with all this written out i feel like i may have convinced you that i despise little nightmares to my very core and would uppercut the development team if i ever met them in person. but no, coming back to what i said in the beginning, i feel pretty neutral about this series. i like a lot of aspects, i dislike a lot of aspects. the passion you might have picked up on in this mini essay comment wasnt my passion for hating the series, it was my passion for talking about game design in a way that makes it seem as if i hate something i dont. i could talk for hours about all the detestable flaws, greedy management, and out of touch mindsets that make up super mario wonder and then turn around and say the game was alright.
truthfully, i agree with a lot of this video. i just unfortunately didnt get the same experience playing these games. and in a way, i almost feel robbed of that experience. i wanna experience whatever the fuck you did playing these games. but no, i dont hate them. i didnt even hate playing them (besides the guest chase sequence). i actually thoroughly enjoyed my time with them... i think. my memory of them isnt the greatest, especially the first one. but im pretty sure i did enjoy playing them.
anyway um, yeah, hope you got something out of this gigantic fucking comment. you have anything to add? anything you think im wrong about? if you um, actually read this. that is. yeah.