Being able to play Little Nightmares 3 with a friend via online co-op is arguably the headline feature of the latest entry for the horror series, and I didn’t even get to try it out in my 20-minute demo at EGX 2024. But that was actually a good thing, because even playing solo, Little Nightmares 3 still provides the quintessential Little Nightmares experience – scuttling about to avoid misshapen and massive horrors – only this time, there’s another forsaken child tagging along.
Co-op really should have been a feature in Little Nightmares 2, so it’s excellent that Supermassive Games – the studio behind Until Dawn and The Dark Pictures Anthology – has made that heavily requested feature a focus as they’ve taken the reins. In fact, based on the demo I played, they’ve absolutely nailed the style of creator Tarsier Studios’ previous two games. Though that in itself has made me wonder how much the Little Nightmares series has left in it.
Dream team
Former frights
We’ve loved the rest of the series so far! Most recently, we praised it for its feeling of “primordial revulsion” in our Little Nightmares 2 review.
While fellow GamesRadar+ writer Catherine Lewis got to face an angry office secretary with a real human co-op partner in her Little Nightmares 3 Gamescom preview, I had to trudge through sand-blasted necropolis ruins on my lonesome – sort of. Regardless of if you’re playing with a friend or not, wrench-wielding Alone and bow-toting Low are always on screen.
Despite my reservations about having a computer-controlled companion following, it actually affected the experience very little. The first time I played the demo, I picked Alone, using her wrench to crank vital machinery and smash rocks, while AI Low humbly stood back letting me lead the way until I called for their archery expertise with a single button press. Although, as in Little Nightmares 2, your AI friend gets involved automatically, helping you yank open doors or even a cupboard unexpectedly stuffed with a corpse.
While it’s nothing new, I am somewhat sceptical as to how effective this system will be over the course of the whole of Little Nightmares 3. On my second go with the demo, this time playing as Low, it quickly became weird seeing AI Alone do things I had just done in my last run.
While having contextual and single-button assists is massively convenient for solo players, I had hoped for a character switch system akin to the classic Lego Star Wars games, letting me play as both characters to solve all the puzzles myself. As far as I could tell, such a system doesn’t exist, but I am at least glad that the AI co-op partners are still undeniably capable and won’t get you killed.
Recurring nightmare
In fact, playing without a player two helped me appreciate just how well Supermassive Games has done in taking the baton from Tarsier Studios. Aesthetically and tonally, Little Nightmares 3 is strikingly identical to the previous games. At one point, I stepped on a big, rotted rat, causing it to squelch and deform – a grim detail that made me think, “Oh yeah, this is Little Nightmares alright”.
Having also trudged past buckets of guts and other viscera, through a harsh desert, and up a huge building, I soon came up against a monstrously large baby, like one of Sid’s cursed creations in Toy Story. Its massive, chubby hand easily crushed a crow and crumbled some of the ruins as it awakened, searching for more prey.
After creeping past several times, the demo ended with a very familiar stealth puzzle where I needed to hide behind barriers to avoid the petrifying gaze of the baby – one that’s almost identical to an early encounter in the first game. It’s a tense and effective cliffhanger to end the demo on, but it made me realize that this game’s familiarity has its downsides too.
While the wrench and bow available to Little Nightmares 3’s protagonists open new paths for puzzles, there wasn’t much about them that felt particularly new or exciting – again, especially when some puzzles are auto-solved by the AI. I did at least get to try out a new feather umbrella glider, and my hope is that unique tools like this appear throughout the game to deepen that sense of resourcefulness as you escape.
Obviously, it’s impossible to judge the quality of the puzzles based on such a small slice of the game too, but the frightening mega baby did at least prove that Supermassive Games are approaching the series with fresh ways to inspire fear and unease, and that does make me excited for the rest of Little Nightmares 3. Despite feeling like it’s going to be more of the same but best enjoyed with a friend, such faithful adherence to the spirit of the excellent original means I think I’ll be sleeping easy until I can get my hands on the full game in 2025.
Can’t wait for Little Nightmares 3 and want something scary now? Check out our list of the best horror games for what to play next!