While I’m not the one to choose to watch a horror movie or read a spooky book, I actually love a good horror game. The bar-setting remakes of Resident Evil 2 and 4 are fantastic, Alan Wake 2’s unconventional storytelling was incredibly suspenseful and memorable, and my favorite spooky experiences come from passing the controller around with a room of friends trying to keep my character alive in games like Until Dawn or The Quarry. The thing is, while I’m a fan of dreadful atmosphere, creepy ambiance, and shocking, disgusting character designs, I don’t really play these games by myself, and can only stomach the anxiety of good horror if I’m experiencing it alongside other people in the room.
That’s why I’m so excited after playing Little Nightmares 3 for nearly two hours: the third entry in Bandai Namco’s horror puzzle-platformer series is designed to be a completely cooperative two-player adventure (though it can be played solo if you like), and based on the level I played, it’s shaping up to fit the same niche as puzzly co-op classics like Split Fiction and Unravel Two.
To be fair, Little Nightmares 3 isn’t nearly as scary as your traditional rated-M horror game anyways. It’s surreal, fantastical horror made from the stuff of children’s nightmares. The level my co-op partner and I played had us sneaking through a haunted carnival filled with giant blob-like people waiting in line for carnival games, stuffing their faces with apples, and carelessly whacking what appeared to be one of their own kind with sticks, like a pinata. It’s a delightfully unsettling, rich atmosphere, and in my conversation with Little Nightmares 3 producer Coralie Feniello – who also served as associate producer on Little Nightmares 2 – she talked about how the Little Nightmares games are built to star children in a world that is not made for them. The carnival level really nailed that feeling, as we climbed through vents, boosted each other up to open doors, and avoided oversized monsters in an unfamiliar, unwelcoming place.
We played as Low and Alone, the two new protagonists being introduced in Little Nightmares 3. The pair is looking for a path that could lead them out of the Nowhere. I controlled Alone: a young girl with pigtails and an aviator helmet who comes equipped with a wrench, while my partner was Low, a young boy who wears a crow mask and uses a bow and arrow. Our two different tools led to combat encounters where Low needed to shoot an arrow at an undead creature charging toward us, and I would finish the job by pulverizing the decapitated head with my wrench before the animated, headless body took one of us out. This required constant communication, and while the instant death for any mistake felt a little frustrating throughout our demo, generous checkpoints kept us motivated to achieve the perfect run.
The controls for all of this are fairly simple, which is another reason Little Nightmares 3 is setting up to be a great choice to play with a partner or friend who may not be as familiar with games. Most actions are performed with just a couple of buttons, and the difficulty comes in through communication and the intensity of doing everything exactly right as you’re being chased around like an unwanted mouse in a large house.
Just like the combat, every puzzle is also designed to be completed by both characters. There was nothing too head-scratching, but one highlight saw us working our way through multiple rooms to find a power source for a radio. Once we found it, one of us had to tune the radio to the right frequency to power on the lights in the room while the other used said lights to open the path forward. Just as in co-op games like Split Fiction, simple puzzles like this are enjoyable when communicating with a partner to solve them. Little Nightmares 3 also seamlessly weaves its world into its puzzle design. In one room, we needed to move a box to use it as a platform to climb higher, and the crate available to us was one component of the classic sawing-a-person-in-half magic trick. Only this time, there was no magic involved and the victim was ripped in half, and as we pulled the box away, their guts unceremoniously spilled onto the floor.
Moments like that really sell Little Nightmares 3’s unique art style that combines claymation-like models with dense, moody lighting. The way light creeps into a dark room through a lone window is striking, and the outdoor segments where the carnival is the only illumination against a rainy, pitch black backdrop creates a very memorable atmosphere. The carnival is just one chapter in Little Nightmares 3, and I’m excited to see how its visuals translate to completely different settings across the full game.
I should point out that this was my first experience with the Little Nightmares series. Outside of researching ahead of this preview event, I never played the first two, which were developed by Tarsier Studios. In 2019, Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group, and they’re now working on Reanimal, a very Little Nightmares-esque game set to release next year (and which itself is leaning hard into co-op). Bandai Namco retained the Little Nightmares franchise in the transaction and have partnered with Supermassive Games on this third entry, the studio behind horror games like Until Dawn and The Quarry that I mentioned earlier. In my conversation with Feniello, I asked what changes longtime fans of the series should expect from Little Nightmares 3, and she said Supermassive worked hard to understand the DNA of the originals while also bringing in their own passion for the universe.
And, she said co-op was the most highly-requested feature from the Little Nightmares community, which led to Bandai Namco’s decision to build this sequel around that idea. While my impression so far of Little Nightmares 3 is without the context of the originals, I can safely say I really enjoyed my time with this one and it got me interested in checking out the whole franchise, for what that’s worth. It will utilize a Friend’s Pass system, where only one player needs to buy a copy of the game to play online with a friend on the same platform. And for any solo players out there, you can play Little Nightmares 3 alone with an AI companion instead of another person, with Feniello noting that they worked hard to balance the experience for single-player as well.
I’m glad I wasn’t playing alone for the second half of our demo, though, which had us working through a more choreographed stealth-action set piece where we had to escape from an old man and his… son? Pet? It’s unclear what that small creature who chased us on all fours was, but that’s part of the fun. It started when we were forced to wake the pair up by tearing a plank off the wall to progress, and from there, each room was another test in avoiding getting caught.
This sequence required us to learn the routines of the residents in this hellscape, watching as the man poured the little guy a bowl of food in the kitchen, as we learned we needed to make our break for the next safe spot as he crawled across the table to dig in. There was plenty of trial-and-error as we tested the limits and pacing of their movements, and I really enjoyed the loop of learning a little bit each run, forming a game plan with my co-op partner, and ultimately succeeding. We also got split up for a brief section where my partner was locked in a cage and needed to make noise to distract the man while I worked on setting him free. After several failed attempts we finally escaped unscathed, and I left feeling excited to see the other intense scenarios Little Nightmares 3 will drop us into in the full game. Little Nightmares 3 arrives on October 10 for all major platforms.
