4.5/5 ★ – ElementaryGaming's review of Little Nightmares II.

A truly fantastic artistic vision. It continues the tradition of the first game by providing avant-garde storytelling through a wordless, minimalist adventure. It admirably does not spell things out for the player, and allows the nightmare world to exist on its own. It somehow manages to communicate so much horror without a single piece of dialogue or exposition. It is perhaps the best successor to David Lynch, in video game form. The soundtrack feels very specific to the world, and like no other game soundtrack. The sound effects also feel very specific and intentional, and make the experience come alive. There are also many excellent setpieces full of detail and incredible design, such as the schoolteacher who extends her neck to check on any sounds occurring in her classroom, and the school bullies made of a sort of glass who shriek and scurry around, causing mayhem. Everything in it feels very specific, and the result of a small, dedicated team with a coherent vision. Like the first one, Little Nightmares 2 has a relatively high difficulty at certain points. There are some undeniably frustrating moments, but they also feel unavoidable by the nature of the game. As an environmental puzzle game, there are many sections which simply rely on trial-and-error to proceed. For example, a trap might spring which you simply aren't able to react in time to the first time, or you may have to repeatedly die before getting the timing of swinging a temporary weapon just right. There are points where how to proceed is too hard to discern. A little opening in a wall or a little object that needs to be interacted with were sometimes too tricky to figure out on my own, and I needed to have a guide on hand for when these sections inevitably popped up. For some observant or intuitive players, this game might not require a guide, but for me, it definitely did. The most unintuitive puzzle was when you were expected to go up an elevator, go back down it, go back up it, go back down, and then jump on top of the elevator itself in order to progress. It simply isn't something I would have realized without a guide. Overall, it continues in the tradition of the first game in being one of the best examples of "show, don't tell" in a video game. It shows remarkable restraint by allowing the player to put the pieces of its story together, and by delivering horror without a single drop of blood. Oh, and those ending twists were quite good.