What is it about the concept that you think has struck such a chord with people? The original Little Nightmares lead not just to a sequel this year, but a prequel for mobile, a comic book run, and a potential television series. Imagination, visual narrative, strong tone, and atmosphere are a big part of our DNA.
He looks like a doctor, but why is his face covered? Is he bad? What is he doing to me? Little Nightmares has a strong visual narrative, but we never actually tell the player what to feel or what is happening, we leave a lot up to the player to fill in the blanks. In Statik, Dr. Ingen looks and acts like a normal doctor, but since his face is censored, it immediately creates tension and a narrative without actually saying anything. They are about suspense and tension created in scenes where we purposefully leave out a lot so the players can use their imagination. But both The Stretchers (Nintendo) and Statik (PSVR) showed different ambitions for the studio, and it did really create these huge questions for us like “Who are we? What are we about?” Statik and Little Nightmares might look and play very differently, but they both have common attributes that are part of the studio’s DNA. Little Nightmares was definitely a strong part of us, as it is a sort of spiritual cousin to City of Metronome, the game we founded the studio on back in 2005. How have the intervening years and the release of Little Nightmares II helped to solidify the studio’s identity?Īndreas Johnsson, CEO: So we did get into a sort of identity crisis after we split with Sony. The studio’s first two original titles were Little Nightmares and Statik, two wildly different sorts of games. Tarsier Studios created a number of titles for Sony Computer Entertainment in its formative years, but more recently has transitioned into a fully independent studio.