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Of the Maw or The hunger nightmare

I confess that the platform game isn’t a type I usually play. But when I succeeded to go across the adventure from start to finish, it gave me a unique and fascinating experience. What is the game about? About a sympathetic character clothed in a yellow raincoat named Six, whose tenacity is to escape from the ship called the Maw.
I consider that has been reflected about the game and a variety of analyses have been written. I’ll only limit myself to describing something about the game and my experience in it.
The game expresses a story and it does so through a non-verbal narrative. All this is realized through its scenography. The elements that comprise a particular scene attain to convey a feeling and communicate a fragment of the story. As the players proceed, they discover the fullness of the narrative plot.
How does it accomplish to perform such non-verbal narration? The game does this through three components that, when put together, create something integral. These are: the soundtrack, the non-verbal narrative and the art. They all depend on each other. If one is missing, the essence of its plot will not be understood. Or, to talk about non-verbal narrative, it rest on art and music, for example.

The surrealism of flesh

The game poses a developed problem, the meat-consuming society. The way the topic is approached is from the perspective of a tot. As the description of the game indicates: overcoming infanthood fears through a nightmarish journey in a world inhabited by corrupted souls. With this premise, the game forms its plot through psychological features where images, allegories, signs and symbols will preponderate. Everything it wants to tell is done in each scenario. The experience is visual, but also aural.
Although the criticism is outstanding, its art also attracts an attention. It's inevitable not to notice the artistic inspirations but it bring about to obtain an original and unique art. Surrealism mainly be conspicuous, although it coalesces with other artistic inclinations and expressions to achieve a grotesque horror scenography in an eclectic way.
It’s true that most of us have a prejudice about how we relate a scene to a work of art that we know. For me, for example, each scene forms a theatrical piece where the character Six is always in a performance. The progressive linear movement of each scene leads to a sequence like a piece of footage. The game is well composed that achieves to convey a message-feeling and, at the same time, an openness to personal understanding reflected in each immersive experience.
The enemies are symbolic and allegorical, deformed and grotesque creatures, causing an aesthetic experience and a unique sensation in the game. I’m impressed by the details. In particular, a feeling of being someone small in a place subjugated by colossal items. The feeling of repugnance, starving, fragility, helplessness and defencelessness is revealed at all times. All of this gives the immersive, uninterrupted experience, in the gameplay that’s seek and hide, as well as solving some small puzzles while dwelling inside the feeling of being caught, cornered or confined.
Although the gameplay is basic, where sometimes the options of running or hiding turn out to be discernible at all times, keeps our breath, fear and suspense by having ominous enemies consigned in our path. SFX, or special sounds, accentuate the tension experienced during such a moment, such as sounds of heartbeats or moans. In this way, the non-verbal narrative of the game is realized together.

The nightmare waltz

I’ll say something briefly about the third component of the game's formula, its soundtrack. Tobias Lilja is its composer. Each piece of music expresses us about the happenings that the protagonist faces, mainly hunger, emptiness and the loss of her infantile.
The music performs the rhythm of the waltz, but takes it to dissimilar gradual tones, namely, light tones to dark tones. The drama of Six moving to the rhythm of the waves swinging the boat. Also it attempts to prove the ladder of Six's journey as presented in the start menu. It’s the ambiguous journey of a shadowy character to the bright peak.
The musical elements are often heard as lullabies but are distorted or deformed. It’s audible at all times and accentuates as a dramatic force in certain parts of the story. It’s ambient, industrial, with electronic music structures, but always focusing on conveying an enveloping atmosphere to each situation as a soundscape for the scenography.
It also relates the plot and, at the same time, affords an intensity to tense the feelings. Sometimes it’s luminous, but other times strident, screaming, strong, dark, funereal and hopeless. It has been realized well in the soundtrack, where it bares the distortion of the protagonist succumbing in a world where corrupted souls live. It’s an excellent piece of music to emphasize the nightmare.

Little Lost Things

As a brief review I discern what I’ve noticed, although many details are absconding. I liked the metaphor, symbolism and allegory of the game, especially the way it begins and closes its plot. It’s beautiful with those opaque, murky and enigmatic tones in the style of surrealism and a drop of pictorial realism.
The game is a unique, original experience with a developed theme that is absorbing at all times. The game is short, but if you halt to contemplate every detail like me, you’ll be in for an agitating surprise. That is, the surrealism felt in the Maw. A world full of paradoxes and contradictions.
You’re unrestricted to imagine and understand what the game wants to say. There’re no theories, but rather a diversity of interpretations, which the game accomplishes to bring about that plurality of understandings and feelings experienced in a grotesque, terrifying, cruel and, paradoxically, beautifully disturbing world.
To complete the adventure, the game contains DLC that intercepts Six's plot. I personally didn't play the mini-game, as I consider Little Nightmares to be an integrated plot and a complete game. There is no need to add even more to something that’s already well done. Recommended, it’s often on sale.

Recommendation: 9/10