The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope

One of the protagonists, Angela, escapes from a demon in pursuit of her by climbing on top of a ledge. To successfully do this, the player must complete a quick time event—in this case, mashing a button a specific number of times before the timer runs out.

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope is a survival horror video game played from a third-person perspective in which the player assumes control of all 5 characters who are trapped in a ghost town of Little Hope. Throughout the game, the player needs to choose different dialogue options, which will influence the course of the narrative and the relationships between the protagonists. The game can be played multiple times, as there are multiple endings and multiple scenarios based on the decisions that the players make. Depending on the choices of the players, some or all characters may or may not die by the end of the story.[2] Action sequences mainly feature quick time events, most of which, if missed, can lead to dire consequences for each character.

Similar to Man of Medan, the game features two multiplayer modes. "Shared Story" allows 2 players to play co-op online and "Movie Night" allows up to 5 players to select their own characters and prompts them to pass the controller at each turn.[2]

Little Hope is presented as an unfinished story in the possession of the omnipresent Curator (Pip Torrens), who requests the player's assistance in completing it.

In the present day, a bus driver is taking four students, Andrew (Will Poulter), Angela (Ellen David), Taylor (Caitlyn Sponheimer), and Daniel (Kyle Bailey), and their professor, John (Alex Ivanovici), on a class trip, before crashing after being forced to take a detour through the ghost town of Little Hope. The story then jumps back to a prologue set in 1972 regarding the Clark family: the parents, Anne (David) and James (Ivanovici), and their four adopted children, Anthony (Poulter), Tanya (Sponheimer), Dennis (Bailey), and Megan (Skye Burkett). Megan places her doll onto a stove lit by Anthony, starting a house fire where each of the family members die except for Anthony, who runs back into the burning house as the prologue ends.

Back in the present, the group set off into Little Hope to search for help as the bus driver goes missing. They enter a bar to use a phone and encounter Vince (Kevin Hanchard), Tanya's boyfriend at the time of the house fire, who reveals that there is no power. On the way up the road, Andrew and Angela find a doll and are dragged backwards in time by a ghostly figure named Mary (Burkett). The group all begin to collide with Mary and see flashbacks where Reverend Carver (David Smith) is blackmailing Mary into helping him frame residents of Little Hope (doppelgängers of the present-day group) for witchcraft. Each member of the group except for Andrew witnesses their doppelgänger be executed before being attacked by a demonic version of them and either successfully fleeing or dying based on player choice. Ultimately, the group ends up at the Clark family household and witness one final flashback where Carver has betrayed Mary and has her framed for witchcraft. Andrew can instruct his doppelgänger to either blame Carver and have him taken away, have Mary's doll burned, or blame Mary and have her executed.

Returning to the present, Andrew is revealed to have actually been the bus driver, Anthony, who hallucinated the present-day group and the residents from the flashbacks as figures from his past, including his family, after being forced to return to Little Hope. Depending on his treatment towards Vince, who he ultimately blamed, and whether he has a gun, Anthony will either be arrested, commit suicide, continue to blame himself for his family's deaths, or accept that the house fire was not his fault.

Will Poulter supplied the voices and motion capture for college student Andrew and bus driver Anthony, two of the game's playable characters, as well as Colonial Massachusetts resident Abraham.

Little Hope is the second installment in the Dark Pictures Anthology series.[3] Unlike Man of Medan, which was a modern-day story, Little Hope's story covers multiple timelines, with the narrative jumping back and forth between the present and the past. The game features more supernatural elements when compared to its predecessor and the team chose witchcraft as the game's main theme as they wanted to explore its root causes. Pete Samuels, the game's director, added that the team was intrigued by the "greed, paranoia, and fear of God" which motivated people to commit heinous acts during that period. The team took inspirations from both the Silent Hill series and The Crucible, which is a play about the Salem witch trials that took place in the Massachusetts Bay Colony during 1692–93. The game was also inspired by films including The Witch, The Blair Witch Project, Hellraiser, It Follows, The Omen, and Season of the Witch.[4] Will Poulter was hired to voice and provide motion capture for Andrew, the game's lead character.[4]

Like its predecessor, the game was designed to be replayable. The team also refined the gameplay, after hearing feedback from players who complained about Man of Medan's gameplay.[5] For instance, the player character can now walk faster. In addition, the team lowered the difficulty of the game's quick-time events, giving more time for the players to react. It had also removed the tank controls.[4]

The Dark Pictures Anthology was envisioned by Supermassive Games as a series of unrelated games which explores different themes and horror genres. The studio's plan was to release each instalment every six months, though this target was missed. The game was first revealed when Man of Medan launched in August 2019. The teaser trailer was included as a post-credit scene for the game.[6] Publisher Bandai Namco Entertainment officially announced the game on 14 April 2020. The game was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One on 30 October 2020.[7][8]

The Dark Pictures Anthology: Little Hope received mixed to positive reviews.[9][10][11] Praise was directed towards the game's atmosphere and sound design, with PC Invasion calling it "top-notch" and Jordan Devore of Destructoid stating there was "more breathing room during exploration[...]with cues to stop you from accidentally 'moving forward' to the next area before you’ve finished combing the area for hidden tidbit-filled collectibles."[22][23] Reviewers also noted the upgraded quality of the plot, character movement, and camera mechanics compared to the previous game in the anthology, Man of Medan.[24][25] One feature especially celebrated was the inclusion of quick-time event notifications that alerted a player about an upcoming QTE, though some critics also noted that this feature took away some of the game's difficulty, in that "it’s now much harder to fail".[26][27] Many critics applauded the co-op and multiplayer modes, with Azario Lopez of Noisy Pixel mentioning, "It’s also an important mode, given that there are certain scenes that you can’t see otherwise."[22] Actor Will Poulter was also praised for his performance as Andrew/Anthony/Abraham.[28]

Criticism was largely directed at the game's linearity, plot twist, and some of the endings, as Noisy Pixel noted, "Some endings can feel a bit anticlimactic or rushed".[29] Kyle LeClair from Hardcore Gamer called the plot twist "polarizing", and New Game Network described it as a "controversial twist", detailing further "...the fates of many characters are decided in a fairly cheap final event that players can do nothing about".[28][30] The game was also criticized for not building up from the innovations introduced in Man of Medan, with Hardcore Gamer writing, "Little Hope doesn’t exactly succeed on the innovation front. You can feel free to basically just copy/paste everything I said about Man of Medan[...]it was foolish to expect any particularly grand advancements, since all of the games in this series would preferably want a consistent feel, but it would have been nice to have even a little more variety."[30]

A negative review from IGN's Lucy O'Brien described Little Hope as "an odd, anemic thriller" where "its choice and consequence system feels strangely superficial".[27] New Game Network echoed similar sentiments about the choice system.[30]

Upon release, the digital download version of Little Hope was the 4th most downloaded game in its debut week, and ranked 9th in terms of physical sales.[31][32]

Little Hope was nominated for seven NAVGTR Awards in 2021, and won one.[33]

The third installment in the series, The Dark Pictures Anthology: House of Ashes, was released 22 October 2021 for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X/S, and features actress Ashley Tisdale.[34][35]

• Official website