NOWHERE SPECIAL

THE LITTLE NIGHTMARES UNIVERSE IS EXTENDED BUT SOME OF THE CREEPY THRILL HAS VANISHED

- CHERYL MULLIN

A circus theme recaptures some of the original's magic

YOU know that strange, irrational fear that sometimes strikes at night when the hairs on the back of your neck prickle.

You can’t explain why, but you just have this nagging feeling that if you turn around, someone - or something - will be quietly standing behind you, watching.

If you could bottle that feeling, you'd get something close to the Little Nightmares universe.

The original nightmare began in 2017, bringing players face-to-face with their childhood fears as they helped the rain-coated, barefoot Six escape from The Maw.

A sequel in 2021 saw Mono, a boy wearing a brown paper bag as a mask, try to survive the horrors of the Pale City.

Then disaster, as developer Tarsier announced it would not be making any more Little Nightmares games, and handed the reins to Supermassive Games, the studio responsible for titles like Until Dawn.

So it was with trepidation that I stepped back into the twisted world of this puzzle-platformer, which sees new characters, Low and Alone, running the gauntlet of horrors in The Nowhere.

You choose which character to play as - Low, a boy in a raven mask armed with a bow and arrow, or Alone, a girl in a green jumpsuit armed with a giant wrench.