The Guests are the second minor enemies encountered in Little Nightmares. They are encountered in The Guest Area and are the main antagonistic faction of said chapter. They are also briefly seen in both The Lady's Quarters and The Residence chapters.
Website Description
The Guests are an essential part of The Maw’s life-cycle. Herded into the large hall, they slump into their bowing stools, and there they feed. Without taste, without need, without end. And then they leave, one way or another.[2]
Appearance
The Guests appear as massively obese humanoid creatures with stumpy limbs and fat, misshapen heads. Their bloated faces appear to be almost deflated or melting, with bulging cheeks, flabby jowls, and/or sagging neck-folds, and many of their eyes appear to be buried by, or sinking down into, the surrounding flesh. All of them wear simple button-up coats stretched tightly over their corpulent guts, and some can be seen wearing dress hats or white masks similar to Japanese kabuki masks. The males all appear completely bald, while the females have their hair styled into neat buns and painted fingernails.
Personality
The Guests rarely speak, and their personality is shown through their actions. They appear to be nothing more than mindless, ravenous gluttons that consume whatever food they can get a hold of. The Guests eagerly board the Maw where they find their seats and continuously gorge themselves; gnawing, chewing, and swallowing massive amounts of meat and other stuff whole.
For reasons unexplained, the Guests appear fixated on devouring Six above all else. Whenever one catches a whiff of her, they immediately attempt to reach her at all costs and completely ignore the food they were eating before. They will plow through obstacles and each other in order to get Six and should any of them get a hold of her, they will immediately consume her without hesitation.
Aside from eating, the only other feat the Guests appear capable of doing is napping, showing that they are incredibly lazy when not wolfing down food. Guests also appear rather clumsy and none too bright, as they can get stuck in certain areas that are more easily traversable for Six.
Little Nightmares
Guests are first encountered during the time Six climbs outside the Maw's hull to enter the Maw's Guest area. Six can spot a long line of Guests from afar, exiting a boat and marching along the walkway to the Maw's main entrance.
After Six gets into the Maw again, she is seen under the long line of Guests, chanting a strange noise as they march into the dining area. The Lady can be seen observing them from atop a balcony.
The first Guest Six encounters is seen chewing on a slab of meat and will not notice her. Upon moving to the next room, a male Guest will spot Six and throw his table to the side before falling onto the floor to crawl after her. Six will get out of the way of the thrown table and move quickly to the next room by climbing a step before the Guest can catch her. Fortunately, the Guest's oversized body will prevent him from climbing the step, leaving him stuck and unable to continue chasing Six.
In the next room, Six will find two guests, a male one and a female one, both sitting together at a single table. Six will climb a tall stack of used plates on the table and while doing so, the female Guest will see her and frantically try to reach for Six. Upon reaching the top, Six will leap off and grab a light fixture hanging above and swing into the window of the next room while the female Guest still tries to reach for her.
Six will arrive in a room with long table and several Guests sitting at it while they gorge themselves. Six will run to other side of the room and climb onto the long table, running to the other side while all the Guests attempt to grab her. Upon reaching the end of the table, Six will climb and reach an upper floor of the Guest Area, where she will find more Guests that will crawl after her. Six will use another light fixture to escape the Guests. Arriving in a large dining room of the Guest Area, Six will continue before another male Guest starts to chase her. Six will lure the Guest into getting stuck under a table before jumping over him and escaping by sliding into a vent in the wall.
After evading one of the Twin Chefs, Six will take an elevator up to another level. Proceeding to the right, Six will continue down a hallway where several Guests will emerge from their rooms to chase after her. The Guests will form a large flood of themselves in their pursuit of Six, crashing through walls, toppling down shelves and breaking antiques. Six will manage to escape this wave of Guests, however, by once more swinging on a light fixture to another room. One of the Guests that was part of the wave will fall down the gap that Six swung across, while the others will stop and be unable to reach her.
Shortly after Six kills the Lady and inherits her powers, she will walk through the Guest Area's hallway as she leaves the Maw. As Six makes her way to the exit, several Guests will see her and will attempt to catch her. However, one by one these Guests will be killed as Six seemingly uses her new powers to suck away their life essences the moment they approach her, leaving their lifeless corpses behind as she makes her way to the exit.
Secrets of the Maw
The Residence
After the Runaway Kid has been transformed into a Nome, he leaves the Residence and wanders around the Maw, descending from a hanging cart into the Guests dining area. As the Runaway kid walks past the elevator to the Lady's Quarters then into a room on the left, he encounters a pile of sleeping Guests.
Little Nightmares (2017 comic series)
Issue 1
In the comic series' issue #1 , the Guests were seen marching around a city while Six tries to evade their gaze. Eventually, The Ferryman pointed out her presence, causing all of the other guests to point as well.
Later on, after Six arrives to the Maw, she turns on a light in a dark room, a group of Guests are seen reaching for her. They pursued on all fours after Six ran away from them.
The Guests can be seen briefly in a frame where they appear to be eating in the dining area.
Strategy
Sitting at their tables, Guests will attempt to grab Six if they see her and if they manage to get a hold of her, they will immediately put her into their huge mouths. Other Guests will immediately stop eating and fling themselves from their tables to crawl after Six, persistently chasing and attempting to consume her above all else. In this case, if the Guests catch up with Six, they can either pounce on and eat her, or crush Six with their bodies. The Guests are so consumed with their hunger, that they are willing to kill or die for food (some guests will fling themselves from high ledges to try and reach Six, or trample each other). However, Guests can be avoided if the heroine is dexterous and quick enough. The Guests' fat bodies and clumsiness can be used against them, as there are certain parts of the environment that they become stuck in, their arms too short to allow them to reach a far distance.
Trivia
- The Guests' four different models are each named in the game's audio files, which identify them as Harry, Maggan, Piggy and Paddan. As it is difficult to distinguish which guest has each voice, the only one that is clearly identifiable is Maggan as the female Guest.
- The Guests may be heavily inspired by the gluttonous humans-turned-pigs in the Studio Ghibli film Spirited Away, to which the general art style of the game is also readily compared.
- The Guests are seen only boarding the Maw from their travel boat, and never vice versa.
- The Guests are said to leave the Maw "one way or another."
- The Guests appear to be mainly carnivorous, as most of the food they are seen eating is some kind of meat or sausage. Some Guests can be seen eating cheese or onions, though.
- This is in spite of the fact that vegetables can be found in the Kitchen.
- It is heavily implied that the Lady drains the life force or energy of the Guests.
- The Lady's power is described as being used for the sole purpose of keeping the engine running and maintaining a hypnotic spell to keep the flow of Guests, who are described as being an essential part of the Maw's life cycle, leaving suspicion that the Lady's power was never intended to be used in draining the lives of the Guests' to sustain her beauty, but was instead always meant to feed and sustain the Maw as it is described as a living entity of its own similar to the Signal Tower.
- There were several hints in the game, that the Guests might be fed in order to be slaughtered, in other words, using their meat for the next newcomers. Under this post, the developers hinted that the sausages cooked in the Kitchen were not of animal origin. A question was also asked (now deleted) about whether the guests really eat other guests, to which the answer was given: Kind of ... but not directly.
- In the kitchen, as Six falls down the garbage shoot, a pile of clothing can be seen scattered all throughout the floor along with the garbage. In the Shoe Monster's house, Six encounters large piles of shoes resembling those belonging to guests, as well as luggage. This heavily implies that the Guests are slaughtered aboard the Maw.
- One of the kabuki masks that some of the Guests usually wear can be seen lying on the floors in the room where Six encounters Dark Six in the secret ending of Little Nightmares II.
- This heavily implies that Six used a television to travel to the city where the Guests inhabit, starting the events of the Little Nightmares comic series.
- The Guests are, in some ways, similar to the Viewers in Little Nightmares II. Both are apparently obsessed with one particular thing (food for the Guests and television for the Viewers) and disturbing them will result in chaos. Furthermore, the main antagonists of their respective games that serve them (the Lady for the Guests and the Thin Man for the Viewers) seemingly wield similar powers to drain them of their life force. The protagonists in their respective games also narrowly escaped them.
- The Guests are one of the few characters in the Little Nightmares games that speak. Some of them at certain moments pronounce the word "yummy", as well as some other indistinguishable words.
- The Guests' bodies will release black smoke after being killed by Six near the end of Little Nightmares.
- All Guests encountered in the dining area crawl when they pursue Six. However, the Guests have no problem walking while they are boarding the Maw and march into the dining area. Due to the large amounts of food they eat, the Guests are likely to resort to crawling as their body weight gain inevitably renders them incapable of standing.
- Within the location of the twelfth Nome, Six will encounter a sleeping male Guest wearing a Kabuki mask. His size is larger than other typical Guests.
- The food the Guests consume is rendered to slide back onto the tables to be re-swallowed, presumably an animation choice made to save time and money while still giving the game the imagery of the Guests partaking in an endless feast.
- The Guests share similar physical descriptions to both The Bathers and The Carnival People.
- The Bathers have the same theme as the Guests, that being March of the Guests.
- In Little Nightmares III, a dead Guest can be found in the Desert wasteland, on the outskirts of the Necropolis wall.
- The Guest's body is also near a vessel similar in appearance to the ship the Guests used to board the Maw.