Warning: Spoilers Ahead
Little Nightmares was a cute little game that came out a couple of weeks ago. I say cute but the only cute things were the Nomes and Six (who became less cute as time went on). I’m not sure what this article is but I guess I’ll figure it out as it goes.
Well, to start with, you play as a disproportionately small child and from the size of the Nomes (who I assume are also children), that’s the normal size for children. This automatically gives you a feeling of powerlessness especially when the “adults” in the game are also disproportionately huge. All the furniture and the rooms are scaled to their size, making the environment hostile and disadvantageous for you.
In addition to having much larger bodies, the adults like the Janitor also have body parts that are too big. There is also the fact that, if you’re in the Kitchen, you might get to see a Chef eat something and he lifts up his skin flab, revealing something dark and smooth underneath. The same goes for the Janitor. When I first saw him, I thought the Janitor had bandages around the top part of his face, but instead, it was his skin flab that had bunched up around where his eyes should be, making him blind. The skin that’s revealed on top of his head is also dark and smooth. The Lady in the final section of the game was also strange because she wasn’t like any of the other characters in the game, being graceful, thin and tall. Perhaps, the crew are all masquerading as one of the fat elites that come to eat at the Maw. This opens up even more questions about what the crew of the Maw actually are and what their true purpose in running the Maw is.
Then, in the midst of all the glutton in the Maw, Six is starving. And her hunger is so extreme that she would commit murder to satisfy it. The fact that she got stronger by consuming the Lady’s flesh at the end also implies that, in this world, you can eat other people to gain power so technically the most powerful are the ones that eat most, like the guests of the Maw. So the Lady’s description in her bio, “Amidst the chaos outside, The Maw is the only place that makes sense…”, makes more sense than it seems. If this sort of cannibal-like feeding was required to reach the top of the food chain as it is seen in The Maw, then the outer world must be full of people who want to climb up (by killing and eating people). The Maw, by contrast, serves food to everyone and the killing is methodical and behind-the-scenes.
There’s also the recurring eye motif. Eyes projecting a searchlight-like beam also appears multiple times throughout the game. If you’re caught in the beam, then you get turned to stone, presumably to be added to the Janitor’s figurine collection. Besides the obvious symbolism to being watched, I’m not quite sure how the eyeballs actually tie in to the story. The most I can come up with has to do with the Lady and how she is described as being hypnotic and omniscient. She also has a bunch of smashed mirrors in her room, perhaps from some sort of paranoia that she is being watched while watching everything herself. This is reinforced by the fact that she had some sort of magical power that lets her teleport and that perhaps she isn’t the only one or maybe her own power affects her too. Maybe she’s the source of power behind the beaming eyes because the beam doesn’t freeze the Janitor when he walks in front of it so there’s some sort of sentience to it.
There’s also a secret room in the Lair level that has a giant closed eye and a button. If you press the button, the eye opens, revealing a view of the nursery room where you first met the Janitor. And that’s all there is to the room. Just a surveillance room. I’m not quite sure how that ties back into the narrative either but maybe it’s part of the Lady’s surveillance because the boss of the area, the Janitor, certainly can’t see.
The last thing I want to talk about is The Twins. The Twins, obviously, look very much alike. When you get to the Kitchen level, you can explore their bedroom and you also have to pass through a bathroom. The bedroom has two beds pushed next to each other and paintings of each of the twins, also next to each other. The bathroom has two toilets that are next to each other as well. Why? One of the promotional images of the Twins features them with their sides together, making them look like conjoined twins. This is another one of those points in the game that I didn’t really get.
If you guys have theories or ideas on what’s going on, then comment that below. As for me, I’d like for them to make another game: make it a series. I know a lot of people complained about the game length being too short but I personally had no problem with that. Like what I implied in the title, this game’s main theme is gluttony. Maybe the later games could be about the other Seven Sins. That would be so cool.
That’s all. I’ll talk to you later.
Featured Image from one of the promotional posters. I don’t own anything.
Update: I found two videos that opened up more interesting little secrets in the franchise. Here they are:
Outlet 
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