Little Nightmares 3 review – disturbing spooks with co-op play only helps enhance the horror

Despite the change of developer and main characters, Little Nightmares 3 is yet another delectably dark adventure that works just as well with a friend by your side.

Just as much as it is about mildly terrifying players in bite-sized chunks, for me, Bandai Namco’s series of darkly gothic puzzle-platformers is also about evolution. Little Six’s descent into the creaky and labyrinthine Maw ship seems so long ago now, but the world of Little Nightmares has only progressed by featuring fresh settings primed to disturb, new characters to play as, and of course, team-based puzzle solving.

Esteemed horror studio, Supermassive Games, picks up this last idea first teased in Little Nightmares 2and absolutely runs with it for this third outing. Doing so by implementing full online and local co-op to make venturing through a harsh world with a pal equally chilling and unsettling. I wouldn’t say the formula has been totally revolutionised as a result. And yet, here more than ever, these little nightmares hit much bigger for it.

This time around Six, and indeed her bag-headed buddy Mono, are both nowhere to be seen. Instead, Little Nightmares 3 tells a largely standalone story, setting you and a friend in the shoes of new characters Low and Alone, who both come packing their own unique abilities.

It’s a small change, yet one that represents a significant gameplay shakeup compared to before since Mono and Six, although visually different, handled much the same. By comparison, Low and Alone both boast slight gameplay quirks that helps make playing through this third macabre adventure feel distinct. It also guarantees you a different experience depending on who you choose to play as.

Low, complete with cape and crow mask, wields a bow-and-arrow setup that comes in handy for targeting enemies from afar and shooting down useful tools. Alone, meanwhile, serves as the pair’s muscle of sorts, wielding a giant wrench that sees her make light work of smashing walls, hitting enemy heads, or spinning around cog mechanisms.

It’d be fair to say that Little Nightmares 3 gets a lot of use out of this duo’s simple but effective abilities. Better yet, I played the majority of this 4- to 5-hour experience by myself, and the AI playing as Low did an excellent job helping me realise the ‘Ah-Ha!’ moment of certain puzzles I’m pretty sure me and a friend would otherwise get stuck on.

Aside from this, I’d be lying if I said that Little Nightmares 3 wasn’t otherwise business as usual to an extent. Because, despite the sharp change of developer, this is still a darkly gothic platformer about solving intricate puzzles, pursuing through a dark world, and avoiding a series of increasingly macabre enemies that have a habit of trapping you in their gaze.

The horror element of Little Nightmares has always been about setting a mood and atmosphere as opposed to leaning into gore or brutality, and this third outing maintains this attitude – despite how grotesque scenarios can become.

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Don't go alone

Setting Little Nightmares 3 apart from prior games in the series is the sheer variety found in the locations here. Whereas the first game did well to make the Maw an intimidating place and Little Nightmares 2 gave us a whole city to survive in, Low and Alone carve out their own path by venturing from desert sea, to rainy carnival, and more. There’s a clever in-universe explanation as to how the pair is able to travel these vast distances, which I won’t spoil, but it works to make Little Nightmares 3 feel a tad more epic despite the focus on intimate locations being kept mostly intact.

For as scary and set piece filled as each chapter is, however, Little Nightmares 3 does still suffer from a few layover issues that have plagued the series before. The main one is the clarity of what you’re being asked to do to overcome certain puzzles. With no hint system in place and an emphasis on a minimalist art style, it’s easy to get stunted at specific points in the story if what you’re being asked to do isn’t totally clear.

Luckily, it doesn’t happen too often, but there were definitely a handful of times I found myself bumping my head up against the wall, looking for a unique item or the right thing to grab. Your AI partner can only assist you so much during these instances.

The game being so short, as expected, also doesn’t leave a lot of room for the few new mechanical ideas Little Nightmares 3 implements to be fully capitalised upon. The opening chapter sees Low and Alone gifted umbrellas roughly midway through, for instance, which are cleverly used to let them float up into the sky using air tunnels and gusts.

Doing this added a new dynamism to the traditional brand of Little Nightmares exploration, hence why I was shocked to not see it return. Low and Alone aren’t short of ways to get around, thankfully, especially since most chase sequences take place on foot. But it still would have been nice to see some newly established mechanics built upon.

While I won’t go into specifics, one of the areas Little Nightmares 3 I would say also improves on past entries is in the story department. Whereas Six’s adventures could often suffer from being a little too abstract and interpretive for its own good, the true nature of Low and Alone’s relationship is something that neatly unfolds across all four unique chapters.

This aspect is no doubt helped by a handful of flashback sequences that further hint at the pair’s history. It meant that, rather than wondering where we were and what we were doing constantly, I could gradually empathise with Low and Alone’s plight more as the narrative rolled on.

Little Nightmares 3 is another excellent entry in Bandai Namco’s series of delectably dark puzzle-platformers. True, some of the puzzles prove to be real headscratchers due to the overt minimalism locations ooze and occasional issues with depth, but this doesn’t dampen the experience of trying to survive several devilish and macabre situations with a friend.

The addition of co-op, both local and online, offers a new twist on the concept without totally upsetting the balance, and I found playing with an AI buddy to be just as satisfying. Regardless, in many ways, Little Nightmares 3 proves that small scares can be just as enjoyable with a friend.

Rating 4/5