Little Nightmares II

Little Nightmares II is the sequel to Tarsier Studios' 2017 horror puzzle platformer, and the camera, scale and tone all carry over: a small child moving through a vast and clearly hostile world, with the threats rendered as oversized adults whose proportions are wrong in ways the lighting refuses to fully reveal. You play Mono, a boy who wakes alone in a forest littered with burnt-out television sets, and who soon finds Six — the protagonist of the first game — locked in the basement of a particularly bad house.

The two travel together for most of the campaign through the Pale City and its surroundings, which the studio populates with discrete environments built around specific monsters: a school stalked by a long-necked Teacher and a swarm of porcelain-faced children, woodland prowled by the Hunter, hospital corridors patrolled by mannequins that only move when you're not looking. Hiding is the default tactic; running is the next; combat, when it's available at all, involves Mono swinging an oversized weapon at one enemy at a time and timing each attack with no real margin for error.

Behind everything is the Thin Man, broadcasting a Signal from a distant tower that warps the city's residents and is pulling Mono toward something he doesn't yet understand. Co-op is one-sided — Six is AI-controlled — but the relationship between the two characters does most of the emotional work, with Mono occasionally calling Six to reach high platforms, and the option to take her hand when the world is being especially generous with its bad ideas.