Little Nightmares is a horror adventure puzzle-platformer in which the player to play as Six, a young girl who must escape an iron vessel called the Maw. Throughout the game, the player solves puzzles to progress through the world, all while relying on stealth to avoid death, as the player character has no attack abilities whatsoever (until they are, on rare occasions, given tools that boost their chances a little bit). The prequel, Little Nightmares II, was released in 2021. There are also multiple DLC levels that expand the plot, offering a new adventure with a new protagonist and giving the player a different perspective on Six’s journey out of the Maw. If you enjoyed playing through this horror adventure platformer, here are 15 games like Little Nightmares that you should play next.
1. Hello Neighbor
This survivor horror stealth game requires the player to uncover a terrifying secret hidden in his paranoid, mysterious neighbor’s basement, while avoiding getting caught and captured by the neighbor. The game takes place over the course of four acts from a first-person perspective. This game is highly similar to Little Nightmares in its unique art style, as well as the stealthy survival elements of the game. This is the best game for you to play if you enjoyed Little Nightmares. A sequel, Hello Neighbor 2, is scheduled for release some time this year.
2. Sally Face
This indie point-and-click horror game developed by a solo developer centers around a young boy named Sally, whose real face has been replaced with a prosthetic one. He uses a video game system to speak to the dead and learn their stories after a handful of mysterious murders have taken place in his town. If you think you’d enjoy an indie horror-adventure with dark twists and turns, this is the game for you.
3. Bendy and the Ink Machine
In this survival horror title, you play a retired animator, Henry Stein, whose drawings have come to life and are trying to kill him. This game has both combat and puzzle elements, including melee-based weaponry and a couple ranged weapons such as a tommy gun or the bacon soup cans that are scattered around the game. This game was released in multiple episodes, so be sure to play through all five in order to experience the full unique cartoon-ish horror of Bendy and the Ink Machine.
4. Dead by Daylight
This survival horror title take an assymmetrical approach to a multiplayer system. It is a one-against-four game, wherein one player is a killer and the other four attempt to escape and survive the killer and avoid being sacrificed to the Entity. The killer holds the advantage, moving at one pace that is faster than that of a sprinting survivor. If you enjoy the excitement of the predator vs. the prey, this is the game for you.
5. Alien: Isolation
This game takes place 15 years after the events of Ridley Scott’s 1979 film, Alien. This stealth-based action-adventure requires Amanda Ripley to stealthily navigate her ship and defeat hostile human and android antagonists. The primary enemy, the Alien, cannot be defeated. If you prefer the jump-scare type of horror game and you enjoyed playing Little Nightmares, this movie-based title is perfect for you.
6. The Outlast series
This first-personal survival horror title revolves around a freelance investigative journalist who decides to investigate a mental hospital in a remote location, which turns out to be overrun with homicidal patients in the dilapidated building. The player character relies on stealth and night vision to move around without getting caught by the patients, all while recording bits of video inside the hospital. Its sequel, Outlast 2, also focuses on a journalist in a similar but sufficiently different setting. The next title, The Outlast Trials, is set to be released some time this year.
7. Soma
As another title on this list developed and published indie studio Frictional Games, this first-person survival horror game abstains from the typical scares of a horror game and relies almost entirely on psychological horror. The player character relies on puzzle-solving, exploration, and stealth to find his way out. If you enjoyed both Little Nightmares and the Amnesia Games, this is the next game that you should play.
8. Mad Father
This survival horror RPG relies heavily on puzzle-solving. The game revolves around Aya, a shy girl whose father performs secret research in his home lab. Aya solves puzzles to break into her father’s laboratory, where she discovers the horrors within. This game has three different endings based on the player’s choices, ranging from a happy ending to an outright horror show. Player beware, as this title gets incredibly disturbing.
9. Among the Sleep
This first-person survival horror action-adventure game takes place from the perspective of a toddler who crawls and walks around to explore, interacting with the world around it with its sentient teddy bear, Teddy, who assists in exploration. The player must avoid the two monsters following them. The monsters blur the player’s vision and create grating sounds, and the feminine monster causes a lullaby to start playing. If you think you’d enjoy a linear horror adventure, this is the perfect next game for you.
10. The Evil Within
This third-person survival horror game is highly similar to Little Nightmares with its various traps, nightmarish enemies, and reliance on stealth. Unlike Little Nightmares, the player character can use weapons in battle rather than relying solely on stealth. If you enjoy the idea of surviving in a horrifying landscape and finding safety in a mental hospital, then this is the game for you. It is available for the Xbox One, the Xbox Series X/S, the PlayStations 3 and 4, and PC.
11. The Amnesia series
These survival horror adventure games are an excellent choice if you favor the first-person perspective, as all gameplay is from the point of view of the player character. You must navigate a castle and solve puzzles while maintaining your character’s sanity. In this game, darkness itself is the enemy, as it affects your character’s playability until his darkness-induced hallucinations attract the monsters towards you. If you enjoyed the horror and adventure aspects of Little Nightmares, this game series is perfect for you.
12. Five Nights at Freddy’s
This indie point-and-click survival horror game is one of the more popular and misunderstood on the list, taking a quality-over-quantity approach to its design. The player plays the night guard at a family pizza parlor called Freddy Fazbear’s Pizza, only to find that the animatronics move around at night and will attack you if you do not find a way to hide in your office. The player must strategize a way to survive without knocking the power out. After the power goes out, there is little to no defense against the animatronics, so beware!
13. The Dead Space series
As another survival horror title in this list, this is a more unique science-fiction series. As the title implies, the series takes place in space, after humanity has depleted the Earth of its resources. On Earth, researchers find a double-helix alien artifact in a Mexican crater, with dire consequences after a researcher leaks the information This is another game featuring disturbing, unsettling, and borderline nightmare-inducing enemies, as they are reanimated, mutated corpses of aliens caused by an alien infection. This game is similar to Little Nightmares with its nightmarish villains and its survival horror gameplay. We would advise against playing this game in the dark!
14. The Resident Evil series
This survival horror series is highly similar both to Little Nightmares and to the Silent Hill series in its unsettling nature. Resident Evil games, aside from Resident Evil 7: Biohazard and Resident Evil Village, are third-person shooters, while Biohazard and Village are first-person shooters with virtual reality capabilities. If you enjoyed the twisted, unsettling monsters in Little Nightmares, you will be delighted and frightened by the mutant body-horror zombies that riddle the maps, making this the next best series for you to pick up.
15. The Silent Hill series
This classic survival horror series, heavily based on the American “everyman” trope and influenced by the psychological horror literary genre is highly similar to Little Nightmares in its survival horror element. Just as Six must escape the Maw with her life, the main character of each Silent Hill video game must survive trials and tribulations through a thick, impenetrable fog. However, each protagonist of Silent Hill can defeat monsters with melee weapons and guns, unlike Little Nightmares. If you are fond of feeling unsettled and you enjoyed Little Nightmares, this is the next best series for you.
Our top pick for games like Little Nightmares was Hello Neighbor. Do you agree with this choice, or do you think we should have put another game in the top slot? Let us know in the comments below!
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