Video Game / Very Little Nightmares

Who knows what's beyond that next door? Given this world, really, do you want to know?

Very Little Nightmares is a macabre mobile Room Escape Adventure Game developed by ALIKE Studios for Bandai Namco Entertainment, released on Android and iOS in May, 2019.

The game takes place in the universe of the Puzzle Platformer Little Nightmares, to which it is a prequel.

It follows a young child (known only as "The Girl in the Yellow Raincoat") who wakes up having crashed her hot air balloon in the heart of a mysterious mansion called the Nest. Using a Point and Click mechanic, the player must guide the Girl out of the mansion while helping her solve puzzles, explore secret rooms, evade mysterious villains, and occasionally run for her life.

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See also the Little Nightmares character sheets.

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Tropes appearing in Very Little Nightmares:

• Action Girl: The girl in the yellow raincoat braves the Nest in order to escape and is clever enough to solve the puzzles to get out.
• Advancing Boss of Doom: In the game's final sequence, the player must flee as the Pretender pursues them headfirst down a cliff. Eventually, the second escapee will be able to crush the Pretender with a boulder, saving you. Ostensibly, that is ...
• Air-Vent Passageway: Like in Little Nightmares, the player often moves between rooms through convenient air ducts.
• All There in the Manual: The names of the characters (such as they are) never appear in the game.
• All Webbed Up: The girl at one point encounters a pile of what seem to be children's bodies cocooned in spider silk, below a massive web.
• Ambiguously Absent Parent: The Pretender's parents never appear (except for their legs in one portrait). She seems to live alone in the Nest with her two servants.
• Antagonist in Mourning: In the final scene, the player runs into the Pretender outside on a bench overlooking the sea, where she is apparently mourning for the skin-doll she has just dismembered.
• Berserk Board Barricade: In the scene shown at the beginning of the game, the girl rushes inside a shed and jams a two-by-four under the doorknob to prevent whoever's pursuing her from getting in. As we find out at the end, it would have been an Absurdly Ineffective Barricade against the Butler, who is telekinetic.
• Big Bad: The Pretender seemingly owns the Nest, where she has children turned into dolls for her to play with, and wants the girl in the yellow raincoat to be her next victim.
• Big Fancy House: The game's main location, the Nest, is a massive mansion with dozens of rooms including its own landfill. In its disrepair, it seems to be rapidly sliding in the direction of an Old, Dark House.
• Bittersweet Ending: The girl in the raincoat dies, but manages to take the Pretender with her, while Six escapes and implicitly wears her raincoat in memory.
• Bonus Stage Collectibles: There are 18 jacks-in-the-box to be found throughout the game, most hidden in secret rooms between the walls.
• Braids of Action: As she falls to her death, it's revealed that the girl wears a braid underneath her hood.
• Call-Forward: The game is packed with references to Little Nightmares, from environments to puzzle mechanics.
  • Most of the jack-in-the-box trophies are based on characters in the first game including the Janitor, the Lady, and the shadow children from the DLC.
  • The burrowing monster in the garbage dump works the same as the one Six encounters in the shoe pit.
  • The piano room transforms a funny hidden achievement from Little Nightmares and Secrets of the Maw into an actual puzzle: in the main game, you get the achievement "Six's Song" for running back and forth across the keys of the hanging piano in the library room; in the "Residence" chapter of the DLC you can unlock a hidden panel and retrieve some flotsam by doing the same on the piano found after defeating the shadow children. In Very Little Nightmares, the sheet music decorations on one room's wood paneling instruct you to walk all the way up the keyboard twice in a row, which unlocks the next stage of the level.
• Canon Character All Along: The little girl escaping alongside the protagonist is indicated at the end to be Six from the main game.
• Control Room Puzzle: In one level, you need to turn the power on to catch a Nome, but only one configuration of four fuse switches will allow you to pull the lever without getting electrocuted. Fortunately, the key is visible behind the door in another room. Unfortunately, the fuse wires are hopelessly tangled.
• Corridor Cubbyhole Run: In one level, the player has to evade the Butler by ducking into a series of conveniently open dryers.
• Creepily Long Arms: The Craftsman's legs and arms are so long that he seems to prefer to keep them folded up in his wheelchair rather than trying to walk. It creates a rather spider-like effect.
• Creepy Child: The Pretender has the appearance of a prettied-up little girl, but she proves to be just as vicious and deadly as her employees.
• Creepy Doll: The Pretender's legions of doll-children. Even creepier because of the implication that they're actually real, preserved dead children.
• Cymbal-Banging Monkey: One appears in the playroom, where you use its pull-cord to get down from a table.
• Death Course: The penultimate level sees the girl in the raincoat running away from the Nest and navigating obstacles while the telekinetic Butler flings everything around at her, including statues, columns, and garden paraphernalia.
• Demoted to Extra: Six gradually appears throughout the game as a minor character, although the player is led to believe that we are playing as her and that Six is instead just another inconsequential child.
• Down in the Dumps: At one point the girl in the raincoat finds herself below in the Nest in its landfill. Escaping it requires solving several trash-based puzzles while avoiding an unseen garbage-burrower much like the one in Little Nightmares's shoe room.
• Dramatic Curtain Toss: In the bathroom, tapping the curtain on the steaming shower causes the girl in the raincoat to slowly approach it before suddenly pulling it back—only to reveal that there's no one inside.
• Easter Egg:
  • Many levels feature a small secret room containing detritus or cast-offs of some sort, one of the 18 jacks-in-the-box that can be collected as achievements, and usually a Nome or two.
  • There is also an extra-secret room (without a box) hidden in the searchlight level. It has some thematic significance, but not much else.
• Enter Solution Here:
  • The key to the fuse puzzle is on the wall behind the door in the dark room, but you have to follow the wires carefully to identify which is actually connected where.
  • One level features pressure pads on the floor that must be activated in a certain order to open the door. The key has been written by a Nome on the wall of the hidden room below the platform.
• Escape from the Crazy Place: The plot follows the girl in the yellow raincoat trying to escape from a strange, strange mansion and its unhinged owner.
• Everyone Calls Him "Barkeep": "The Butler" and "the Craftsman" are their only given names. "The Pretender" also counts, since that seems to be her role in life.
• Evil Old Folks: The Craftsman and the Butler both appear old and decrepit.
• Exploring the Evil Lair: In her efforts to escape, the girl ends up getting a pretty thorough tour of the expansive Nest.
• Eye Motif: Like the Maw, the Nest has eyes all over the place—on doors, in patterns on the walls, even in its searchlights.
• Falling Chandelier of Doom: One of the many objects the Butler tries to crush you with is the ornate chandelier in the main foyer.
• Giant Spider: Implied. When the girl jumps through the escape hatch, she falls down a shaft and into a very large spider web which quickly breaks, dropping her onto a pile of cocooned children's bodies. But no spider is ever seen.
• Gotta Catch Them All: There's a hidden jack-in-the-box to find in each level. Whether you have found each displays under the level thumbnail in the menu.
• The Hero Dies: The girl in the raincoat is attacked by the Pretender and falls to her death.
• Hero of Another Story: At various points throughout the game, you catch sight of another child making an escape attempt. Her smaller size seems to be allowing her to take advantage of more efficient routes, which we don't get to see much of. Her story does intersect with the protagonist's at the end, however.
• Hope Spot: At the very end, it looks like Six and the girl in the raincoat have defeated the Pretender and won. They gaze at each other for a moment. But then it turns out the Pretender is Not Quite Dead, and she attacks the protagonist for the last time.
• How We Got Here: The game opens with the girl in the raincoat running into the tool shed and barricading the door, before slowly backing away as an unseen pursuer pounds on it. Then we return to her balloon crash in the Nest and work our way forward.
• Humanoid Abomination: Just as much as the original game. The Craftsman is absurdly tall due to his long limbs and has backward-bending ankles. The Butler's head and unnaturally arched body are just strange, not to mention his telekinetic powers. Even the Pretender is off—she can crawl down a cliff headfirst and has the ability to disintegrate the protagonist by simply touching her.
• Iconic Outfit: We are tricked into thinking the player character is Six by the yellow raincoat she wears. The end of the game implies that it actually is the same coat.
• Improvised Weapon: In one sequence, the player must direct a jet of steam at the Butler to distract him while making their escape.
• In Medias Res: The story proper begins right after the girl in the raincoat has apparently crashed her hot air balloon in the Nest. We never find out what led up to this.
• The Jeeves: The second enemy the girl encounters is know as the Butler. He certainly looks the part, and performs various household tasks including serving tea and killing vermin on behalf of his employer.
• Light Is Not Good: The eye-shaped searchlights near the beginning of the game emit beams of light that turn the player to stone if she stands in them too long.
• Literal Cliffhanger: The game's final level takes place on a cliff overlooking a large body of water. The player has to climb down its side, pause to knock over a tree for the other escapee, and run along a ledge to escape the Pretender. At the very end, the Pretender tackles the player and takes them over the side with her.
• Locked Door: Most of the doorknobs in the Nest are too high for the player to reach, but many puzzles involve finding a key, a passcode, or a shoe to throw at the button.
• Lonely Doll Girl: The Pretender. Played for Horror, seeing as her dolls are crafted from actual children.
• Lonely Rich Kid: The Pretender, it seems, was so lonely that she started commissioning skin dolls to treat like actual children.
• Mind over Matter: The Butler is telekinetic, which comes in handy when killing Six as well as with normal chores. Upon closer inspection, it seems that his hands are actually manacled behind his back.
• Mummies at the Dinner Table: The Pretender's preserved playmates are first seen in a dining room, where several dozen of them are seated at a long, fancy dinner table. When we first see the Pretender herself, she's having tea with more of them.
• Mundane Utility: The Butler is frequently seen using his telekinesis to complete menial household tasks such as laundry and ironing.
• Mysterious Past: Very little is known about the girl's past, besides the fact that she accidentally crashed at the Nest in a hot-air balloon.
• Nobody Here but Us Statues: After pulling the plug in the TV room, the girl has to run back to the empty seat amongst the Pretender's Creepy Dolls and pretend to be one as the Butler floats past.
• No Body Left Behind: The Pretender can apparently make people disappear entirely just by touching them.
• No Escape but Down: At the end of the laundry room sequence, the girl in the raincoat must drop down through a hatch to escape the Butler, which results in a rather long fall.
• No Name Given: She's only referred to as "the girl in the yellow raincoat."
• Not Quite Dead: The Pretender appears to be dead after Six drops a boulder on her, but then she suddenly lunges at the girl in the raincoat, sending them both over the side of the cliff.
• Oddly Small Organization: A mansion the size of the Nest should require tens of servants to keep it running, yet the Pretender's only employees seem to be the Craftsman and the Butler.
• Ominous Knocking: In the cutscene at the beginning of the game, the girl barricades herself inside the tool shed and slowly backs away from the door while an unknown pursuer pounds on it. When we catch back up to that place in the story, we see that it was only the little girl from the nest knocking to be let in.
• Pastimes Prove Personality: The Pretender's main (possibly only) hobby is playing house with her hundred-plus dead child dolls. She also tries to kill you.
• Player Character: You control a young girl in a yellow raincoat.
• Prequel: The game was advertised as taking place before the events of Little Nightmares, though its only connection to the main game is by a character. And it's not who you're led to believe.
• Protagonist Without a Past: We learn virtually nothing about who the girl is or what she's doing in the Nest.
• Raincoat of Horror: The girl wears a bright yellow raincoat throughout the game. At the end, it floats away in the water, where it will eventually find its way to Six in Little Nightmares II.
• The Reveal: It's not until the raincoat girl's braid flies out of her hood while she's falling to her death that we realize she's not Six.
• Room Escape Game: It's primarily this. The objective is always just to progress to the next room or area—which is easier said than done given the player character's size.
• Rope Bridge: In the climactic chase scene, the girl eventually escapes the Butler by running across a precarious rope bridge stretched between two cliffs. He uses his telekinesis to break the bridge, but if you're far enough across you end up on the far side and can climb back up it like a ladder.
• Rule of Symbolism: There's no real reason for there to be a flickering TV hanging by a thread above the vulnerable baby bird in the secret room, except that in the Little Nightmares universe TVs tend to symbolize danger to children.
• Run or Die: Except for the steam room and the very end, the player has no way of fighting back against the monsters and must flee or hide from them.
• Scary Jack-in-the-Box: The jack-in-the-box achievements are quite startling when they pop open, and most of them contain mini versions of the Little Nightmares monsters.
• Shrine to Self: The Pretender has a massive statue of herself being worshiped by children in the main foyer, as well as dozens of portraits of herself on the walls.
• The Speechless: Neither the girl in the raincoat nor any of the Nest's inhabitants utters a sound, apart from the Pretender, who screams at the girl and can at one point be seen berating the doll that was knocked out of its chair.
• Spoiled Brat: The Pretender seems to be this, in command of an immense mansion with servants waiting on her hand-and-foot while catering to her delusions.
• Steam Vent Obstacle: There are several puzzles involving steam in the laundry area. At one point, the player must walk across a pipe, avoiding the jets of steam that periodically emerge from its holes, and another involves strategically blocking and opening vents in a pipe in order to get by it while the steam is turned on.
• Stock Video Game Puzzle:
  • Stepping Stone Puzzle: The eye-light puzzle requires getting a crowbar and push another block to hide behind down from its ledge.
  • Weighted Switch Puzzle: The salt barrel room is one of these. You have to get a smaller barrel down from a shelf and corral it onto the button to get through the door.
• Super-Scream: When the Pretender catches sight of the player on the cliff, she utters an ear-splitting scream that stuns the girl for a moment.
• Surreal Horror: For many of the same reasons as the main game. Who or what is the Pretender, and why does she live in the Nest?
• Taken for Granite: In a scene right out of the original game, the girl must sneak past a series of eye-shaped searchlights that literally turn you to stone if you stay in them long enough.
• Taking Up the Mantle: At the end of the game, the girl in the raincoat falls to her death in the water below the cliff, and after a few seconds her empty coat resurfaces. After the credits, the young girl who has been helping her (presumably Six) can be seen climbing down the cliff as if to retrieve it.
• Taking You with Me: The Pretender manages to knock the protagonist off the edge of a cliff with her.
• Taxidermy Is Creepy: Some of the most unsettling levels take place in the Craftsman's taxidermy workshop, where skins are drying on display.
• Team Spirit: Surviving the final chase sequence requires collaborating with the younger escapee. First, you have to time your shoves with hers to push open the main gate, and then later the Pretender will corner and kill you if you don't stop to help the little girl off her ledge by pushing over a dead tree for her.
• Thwarted Escape: After descending the grand staircase, the player finds themself in the main foyer of the mansion, where the double doors are wide open. Careful though! Right as you're about to cross the threshold, the Butler will emerge from the door at the left and crush you with a Falling Chandelier of Doom if you don't move quickly enough.
• Trash Landing: At one point the girl falls down a garbage chute into the dump, where a bin of trash bags cushions her fall.
• Vague Age: The Pretender appears childlike, but the decrepit state of the mansion and its employees (as well as the sheer number of skin-dolls) seem to suggest they've been living like this for quite some time.
• Wainscot Society: As in the Maw, the Nomes seem to have their own little world built up within the walls of the Nest. Various Easter Egg rooms show them painting, swimming, and even engaged in some sort of prayer before shrines to their favorite doll children.
• Wax Museum Morgue: The Craftsman's job seems to be to turn children into dolls using their own skin and hair for the Pretender to play with. Many of the later levels are filled with these lifelike dolls.

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