Some people are just bad. Or how else can it be that two frightened, dear children are relentlessly chased by a rough butcher? With the rifle through the dark forest. Every time the darkling appears to be left behind, it reappears. Conversely, is a joyful shouting bad when the two kids finally manage to shoot him down with a shotgun?

“Little Nightmares II” is scary. Well, the name itself says it all and somehow dark sequences paired with horror are to be expected. Nevertheless, it may be disturbing for some when the little character has to fight its way through the intestines of slaughtered animals and endures a permanent agony. You need the right stomach for that. Apparently many have that too, because the game by the Swedish developer Tarsier Studios has a considerable and enthusiastic fan base.

For the faint of heart, however, the horror is a shame. Because if you subtract everything that is dark and horror from “Little Nightmares II”, you get an intelligent puzzle adventure that offers good entertainment. As a boy with a brown paper bag over his head, you fight your way through a dilapidated city. You get help from another child (Six from the first part), but you cannot control him. The common goal is to free the TV-addicted citizens of the metropolis from the spell of the flickering boxes. To do this, you have to solve puzzles, sneak past enemies unseen, hop with pinpoint accuracy, run in good time or find and use the right utensils.

The game works without a single spoken word. It doesn’t need that either. The wonderfully staged environment, the gripping music and effective background noise tell the story by themselves, while criticism of our television consumption is conveyed with finesse.

There are of course countless games in which much worse orgies of violence are not even worth mentioning. But with “Little Nightmares II” it is the contrast that creates the horror. On the one hand the small children who take each other by the hand in difficult moments, on the other hand distorted addicts in an evil world.

While the horror is a matter of taste, the playing time is objectively short. Basically, you don’t need ten hours to play through the nightmare. On the other hand, at just over 30 euros, the game costs less than half as much as some big titles.

Whether there will be a third part of “Little Nightmares” is in the stars. In any case, it should be certain that the development studio Tarsier Studios will not be involved. The Swedes have already announced that they want to break new ground. The “Little Nightmares” brand, however, belongs to the Japanese video game company Bandai Namco Entertainment. This in turn declared his interest in expanding the franchise further in the future.

“Little Nightmares II” has been released for PC, Playstation, Xbox and Switch. The publisher made the test sample available to the “Wiener Zeitung”.