As I’ve grown older, I’ve become more enamoured of horror video games. Perhaps it’s a disillusionment about the world, and what’s actually scary. The older you get, the more you realise spooky monsters and night terrors aren’t scary. My real nightmares are about doing my taxes, and selling things on Facebook Marketplace.
Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes manages a fine balance in its artful exploration of real and fantasy fears. While it’s essentially about charting a giant world as a small, vulnerable being, there are layers to this adventure, and fears adapted that might feel all-too-real to some.
Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes preview – quick links
Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes invites you into a giant world
This Little Nightmares spin-off is a puzzle-filled horror adventure that sees you playing as Dark Six, a mysterious shadow creature who resembles Six, the protagonist of the original Little Nightmares. At first, you see Dark Six’s world from the outside, looking in via a virtual television set.
Then, you embody them entirely via headset and controllers, using movement and buttons to wander through a new, shockingly tall world as a tiny being. If this game could be defined by a core fear, it’s that of helplessness and smallness, as with other games in the Little Nightmares franchise – but that’s not all there is to it.
Walking carefully through shadowy corridors, you are surrounded by walls that stretch high into the distance, doors with unreachable knobs, and objects that are genuinely imposing in their size. The benefit of VR is that you can really feel and see the size difference. You can reach out and ‘touch’ the walls of your prison, and feel the weight of your conundrum.
You are so very small, and the world is so very big. How on earth could you make a difference?
Altered Echoes does well to balance your lack of power with ingenuity, presenting an array of complex puzzles to solve, using various objects, good timing, and clever thinking.
You may be small, but you have to power to pick up and push objects. You can crouch down to hide under obstacles. You can use your senses to figure out when to pause, and when to forge ahead.
The use of sound is particularly impactful in this VR setting. Altered Echoes presents you with an array of scenarios where sound is key to advancing – to monitor enemy movement, and make your way through complex locations. It’s a learning experience in some parts, but figuring out when it’s ‘safe’ is all part of the journey.
Fantasy and real-life fears combine in Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes
In the preview segment shared with ScreenHub, two key chapters of Altered Echoes were shown off, revolving around separate mechanics, but focussed on different aspects of fear.
In one particular gameplay segment set in a train station, players are required to watch the marching of giant businessmen heading to work in waves, their stomping feet landing with great shakes.
Marching in line, they only stop briefing – so you must scurry along in this gap, attempting to save yourself from the march of business. Perhaps it’s too on-the-nose to say this segment feels mightily like a metaphor for bowing to modern capitalism, but it’s certainly a real fear, well-adapted. You never want to be caught underfoot of the machine.
In VR, it’s horrific to see the lines of boots, as the blank-faced giants march together as a hive mind.
In another segment, this Little Nightmares adaptation leans more into the world of fantasy horror, as players are tasked with wandering through a train carriage as a conductor with a long, floppy neck crawls across the ceiling to maintain order, panopticon style. You are constantly watched, with every movement scrutinised.
If you move too quickly, the conductor will spot you and descend, catching you in his eye beams for doing the wrong thing, for not having a ticket, for being too small.
What works so well about these segments is how they corral fantasy and real-life fears together. On the surface, this is a game about overcoming enormous obstacles. But there’s an artful critique of modern business and society in here too, particularly in segments involving the giant, long-limbed businessmen.
Were there’s lesser meaning to be gleaned – sometimes, a monster is just a monster – the game’s purple hues and dream-like atmosphere elevate the rest of this experience.
Based on my early preview, Altered Echoes is shaping up to be a unique VR experience that understands the core premise of the Little Nightmares franchise. It’s not overtly, stomach-churningly terrifying. It doesn’t go straight for shock value and disgust.
Instead, it presents a strange, discombobulating world to overcome, where thoughtful solutions and experimentation with VR mechanics are encouraged. It strikes an effective tone, and one that stays true to the nightmarish nature of its predecessors.
As announced, Little Nightmares VR: Altered Echoes launches for VR devices on 24 April. Those looking for a spooky – but not outright traumatising or horrific – VR adventure should keep an eye on this game as it heads to launch.
