Little Nightmares 3 review: "An overly safe, uneven, and half-baked follow-up where co-op is a hindrance instead of the evolution it should've been"

When it was announced that Supermassive Games was stepping in for Tarsier Studios to make Little Nightmares 3, I was conflicted. On one hand, Supermassive made Until Dawn, one of my favorite horror games ever. On the other, that's a high bar to clear, and this horror platformer is a different kind of beast entirely. Sadly, Little Nightmares 3 not only fails to reach the highs of Until Dawn – it falls short of its predecessors, too, carrying over wrinkles I was hoping to see ironed out and underutilizing new features that could've otherwise taken the series into exciting new directions.

Little Nightmares has always been a series that makes up for its clunky controls and shallow gameplay with meticulously crafted vibes: the imposing sense of scale, the wonderfully macabre creatures, and the delicately conveyed lore behind it all. This series is perfect for October, and whether I'm compelled by jumping from platform to platform in-between chase sequences and tedious puzzles doesn't matter. I play these games for the vibes. But with Little Nightmares 3, I was hoping innovations like co-op, a gliding umbrella, and bow-and-arrow would give me something more than just vibes to huff on, but after rolling credits, I'm not sure it even gave me that.

New kids, same chores

The one big highlight in Little Nightmares 3, the ace up its sleeve single-handedly carrying the three stars I'm awarding the game here, is The Carnevale, a lot of which was previously already seen in gameplay trailers. When I emerge from one of Little Nightmares 3's uniformly dour environments into this comparatively vibrant, colorful playground, it's like a breath of fresh air. So much of this game feels like trudging through the same claustrophobic pipes, sneaking past the same twitchy mannequins, and running away from generic arachnid humanoids, and well, The Carnevale at least looks different. You're still just wandering around, occasionally crouch-walking past enemies that, when triggered, rush toward and eat you, and solving uninteresting puzzles, but at least you have something different to look at.

And that, right there, is where the true nightmare lies: the tedium. Little Nightmares 3 is a chore to play. The umbrella? You might think you could ride upward drafts around obstacles or glide haphazardly above a pool of clawing, murderous hands. Gliding mechanics are platforming gold, even when lazily implemented, but nope, in Little Nightmares 3, the umbrella just carries you upwind to higher platforms. And it goes away entirely about halfway through the game.

But the bow-and-arrow and wrench thing! Surely, new protagonists Low and Alone bring something new to the table, gameplay-wise, right? Technically, yes, Low has a bow, and Alone has a wrench. But the limits of the tools' functionality is insultingly simplistic. The bow shoots things, and the wrench whacks things, and that's it. The worst part: many of the game's puzzles are based around these mechanics. Don't know where to go? See a weak point in a wall? Hit it with your wrench. Can't reach a high-up platform? Shoot the string suspending the crate hanging from the ceiling with Low's ranged attack.

Better together. Or not

Co-op is probably the biggest disappointment of Little Nightmares 3. The decision to leave out couch co-op is a baffling misstep. The series has always seemed primed for a second player, but specifically someone in the same room as you. Unfortunately, even if the game offered split-screen, I'm not sure the experience would be any less monotonous.

If anything, the co-op option, which doesn't support drop-in multiplayer and must be committed to from the beginning of each playthrough, just gets in the way of solo play. I can't count the amount of times I died simply because Low, my companion, failed to play her part in time. Otherwise, again, it's just, shoot string, bash object, and far too often, pry something open together, jump in tandem to break through the floor, or move a heavy crate around.

Now do that again, and again, and again, until you're chased by something. The chase scenes are intense, and by far the scariest parts of the game, but they're also the most frustrating. A lot of these encounters feel like 'gotcha' moments where you can't know what the game wants you to do until you're dead.

For example, oftentimes you're running away from a monster, and you slide through a small opening into a new room, and even at full sprint, you're inevitably caught and killed. But if you somehow spot the little box off to the left, obscured by low light, of course, you'll know you're supposed to veer off and hide until the creature goes away. The thing is, when you're being chased by a giant spider lady, the last thing you're paying attention to is a box in the corner of the room, distilling otherwise thrilling games of cat-and-mouse into experiments of trial and error.

The game definitely picks up considerably in its second half, starting with the carnival level. I won't spoil anything, but there were times in the final two chapters where I had to briefly put the controller down to give myself a break from the tension. But again, it's a grating variety of tension that's as much the result of questionable design as intentionally nerve-racking scenarios. There's a lot of stealth action in these parts, burdened by the same monotony of learning enemy behavior through failure that often seems unavoidable, turning them into a guessing game that quickly grows tiring instead of frightening. Still, I was relieved that the frankly boring first half transforms into a fairly stirring, fast-paced, even experimental conclusion where you play with physical light and non-linear exploration in some really fun ways, particularly when you equip an item that blurs the line between nightmare and reality.

'Til death do us part

For better or worse, Little Nightmares 3 definitely feels like a Little Nightmares game. Set pieces, even those that appear monotone in retrospect, are spectacular. There's a playful, mischievous, but ultimately oppressive mood so unique to the series Tarsier created that I'm delighted to find intact, but there are also rough edges still to be sanded down. The distanced perspective and dim lighting characterizing the franchise makes it hard to nail down where to approach a platform from a ledge, again leading to death that frequently feels unwarranted. There are spatial platforming puzzles, absent of environmental or narrative relevance, testing the limits of your patience for rearranging vertical stacks of platforms until precisely positioned. In other parts of the game, I put down the controller to take a breather from the anxiety. In these parts, I put it down because I worried the handles would crack under my aggravated grip.

I don't hate Little Nightmares 3; I only hate that it falls short of my expectations. There's a lot of heart to the story that I can't touch upon, but I applaud Supermassive for its earnest and largely successful attempt to balance foreboding, harrowing themes with childlike, lovelorn characters. While I wished for more variety, what's on display stands tall with the best environmental designs of the series, and particularly in the back half, it's a scarier game than you might expect. There are flashes of brilliance reflected in Supermassive's worldbuilding and emotionally resonant, cinematic storytelling, but in every other regard Little Nightmares 3 is an overly safe, half-baked follow-up where co-op is a hindrance instead of the evolution it should've been.

Need to catch up? Take a look at our complete Little Nightmares timeline and story recap ahead of Little Nightmares 3.