Little Nightmares 2 Demo: world building with things, not words

The best worldbuilding is conveyed by things, not words.

In this demo, no one speaks to the protagonist, whose face remains concealed throughout. We are told nothing about where we are or even why we find ourselves in the woods at night. We trudge on, aware of a disproportion between ourselves and the environment. We are in an alien place… it is not hospitable. Sneakers litter the ground and we find their owners strung up in a net, contorted limbs poking out at repulsive angles, dark fluids pooling below. We inch forward, over a rope bridge cut on the side of our approach, no doubt to evade pursuit from the very direction we advance in. We narrowly pass traps laid to break our bodies, leave us to die cruelly, slowly.

Light leaks into the trees from the windows of a dilapidated house, where we notice the flesh of the sneaker-owners morcellated on the kitchen table. Moonlight in the hallway draws us to the basement door, slightly ajar. Down the stairs, we hear life behind a makeshift barrier, notice wall-markings counting days spent locked here. Heaving as we maneuver a hatchet, far too big for us, owned by the titanic residents of this house, we splinter the boards before us and discover another person, our size, cowering in the shadows. We extend them our hand.

Staying low as we ascend the basement stairs, we progress toward the exit past a family seated for dinner, long since… changed. Though seemingly assembled from artificial parts like mannequins, fleshy growths bulge from eye sockets and joints. Between us and the exit, we find the homeowner returned, hacking at an inert, wet mass on a butcher block. He hears us as we slip out the creaky screen door and hefts his rifle. We realize we have mere seconds and dive behind nearby detritus, which disintegrates as it is hit by a shot meant for us. Our pursuer, clad in a sack cloth hood and overalls, easily ten times our size, sweeps the tall grass where we cower with his lantern, rifle cocked. While his head is turned, we dash madly for a nearby rabbit hole. Our pursuer takes aim.