Little Nightmares III is the first game in the Little Nightmares franchise to not be developed by Tarsier Studios. Instead, Supermassive Games, which many know as the developer of Until Dawn, has stepped in for Bandai Namco to try and fill the shoes of Tarsier Studios. Understandably, some fans could be hesitant about another team’s take on such a beloved franchise. Add on that Little Nightmares III is the first game in the series to include co-op, and you can see how this could end up being a misstep for the series.
While I can thankfully say that Little Nightmares III isn’t a bad game, there are enough small missteps throughout the experience to dampen the game as a whole.
Our Story Begins…
Little Nightmare III begins with our main protagonists, Low and Alone, emerging from a broken mirror into a desert village full of stone statues. Together, you must traverse through the desert while avoiding the glowing eyes of a giant toddler that turns those it casts its gaze upon to stone. As you progress through the world, you will find yourself thrust into creepy location after location with its own theme and main enemy, piecing together Low and Alone’s relationship and backstory as you explore. Like previous games in the series, Little Nightmares III’s story is meant to be pieced together by environmental storytelling and how your characters interact with the world. There is next to no exposition, and you are left to interpret what each location and boss encounter represents in the grand scheme of things. Over the six-hour campaign, I found myself engaged with the story and wanting to continue on to see what the game would throw at me next.
The atmosphere and level design, artistically, are truly wonderful as each location has a distinct personality and theme that feels unique compared to the last, while remaining coherent. Supermassive Games is no stranger to the horror genre, and the studio is able to use that experience to craft some really disturbing locations and set pieces. Outside of the atmosphere, the game does lack any true scares, however. After the first couple of locations, I found myself not really frightened when entering a new room and just blasting my way through without any worry about dying or being scared. This continues with the enemies and bosses of Little Nightmares III. While aesthetically interesting, each of these encounters was underwhelming and not that tense to play through. The game is just too easy and doesn’t have enough interesting set pieces and moments to really capitalize on the wonderful art design and animations.
Sharing a Nightmare
As mentioned earlier, the main departure in Little Nightmares III compared to previous titles in the series is that the game is now fully playable with a friend via online co-op. It is an interesting change and does add a whole new element to the Little Nightmares formula. While working together to solve puzzles and overcome challenging obstacles can be rewarding in gaming, Little Nightmares III doesn’t push back against the players enough to make it so. The game doesn’t take advantage of the two-protagonist system enough to warrant its move into co-op, especially in its puzzle design.
Supermassive tries to give some variance to each character by giving each a unique ability. Low has a bow and arrow to shoot objects or break ropes, and Alone has a wrench she can use to break through weak objects and hit some buttons. However, the game unfortunately doesn’t ever make you have to use them in fun or creative ways. Puzzles are usually almost apologetically easy, and the solutions can be solved almost instantaneously upon stumbling into them, usually requiring one of the players to use their character’s ability to do so.
The game can be played solo by having the player pick to control one of the protagonists for the story, while the other is completely controlled by AI. This introduces another slew of problems, though, where there can be stretches where you are pretty much just running through stretches of a level while the AI solves the puzzle immediately because it requires them to use their skill. As a result, this can lead to some boredom for solo players, making the game feel less interactive and fun.
I almost wish Supermassive Games had just made Little Nightmares III mandatory co-op, ala Hazelight’s Split Fiction or It Takes Two, so the studio could fully embrace the need to work together and craft puzzles fully around two people working together. Instead, we have this weird middle ground where it seems the team had to tone down the difficulty way too much to compensate for the AI being able to not hold back a solo player by having to do complicated maneuvers in tandem with them.
Not Unsalvageable
While I have quite a few problems with Little Nightmares III, I think there are enough shining aspects in the overall experience to make it worthwhile for some players. There are a ton of collectibles hidden throughout each level, from small dolls to pick up, porcelain figures to break, and lost ghosts to encounter. These are fairly well hidden and can be missed if you aren’t paying attention to every nook and cranny while exploring. Finding these collectibles was one of the more satisfying moments in my playthrough, as I actually had to engage with the game more and pay attention to my surroundings. I know some gamers aren’t the fondest of hidden collectibles and scavenger hunt-style gameplay, but it is something that I’ve always enjoyed as long as the collectibles are meaningful.
Artistically, Little Nightmares III also shines. The beautiful yet haunting world is fully realized, and due to wanting to find all the collectibles, you really start to notice the details in each space and can piece together how this location ties into the narrative as a whole. There is some good world-building here that Supermassive Games can build off of to start their own story in the Little Nightmare’s universe. The team just needs to commit to the co-op aspects if it wants to continue down that route and challenge the player more. If this can be done, either through DLC or another sequel, I think Supermassive has what it takes to make a game that lives up to the legacy of the Tarsier Little Nightmares titles.
Disclaimer: Bandai Namco provided a PlayStation 5 copy of Little Nightmares III for review purposes.
