As a Gentle Gamer, there are some games I'll just never play. My nerves just can't deal with the stress, or I know it will give me nasty dreams for months, or whatever other thing might affect a soft soft buddy like me.
But that doesn't mean less-gentle games don't intrigue me. So, I found my loophole: watching Let's Play videos on Youtube. Watching other people play games doesn't fill me with the same sort of anxiety that playing first-hand does. With this little bit of distance, I can see what mechanics games are toying with, without having to deal with subsequent anxiety dreams.
This week, I watched a play-through of Little Nightmares, a beautiful game that falls into some icky tropes. We ask instead: how can we use the familiar language of horror to expand our world instead of contracting it?