When the original Little Nightmares was released in 2017, it won praise for its fresh take on puzzle platforming horror. Its sequel upped the scare factor even further, earning critical acclaim while deepening the series’ mythos. With a new developer at the helm of its threequel, the question on everyone’s minds is whether the franchise’s third outing sticks the landing.
The answer is, ‘Yeah, sort of…’ but with some major caveats. Little Nightmares III is essentially a soft reboot for the series with an all-new storyline and lead protagonists, yet it faithfully adheres to the well-trodden gameplay formula and level design of Tarsier Studios’ earlier entries, resulting in an experience that leans perhaps too much into reiteration rather than reinvention.
While competently executed under the auspices of Supermassive Games, the third instalment failed to spike my cortisol or wrack my nerves the way Little Nightmares II did. The series’ trial-and-error gameplay is present, along with its oppressive atmospheres and macabre set pieces, but it all felt more brisk, gentler, and less pulse-pounding than its celebrated predecessors.
Boasting multiplayer for the first time in the series’ history, the implementation of this fandom-requested feature plainly misses the mark. While the game is built around variations on clever co-dependent puzzles that require two players to solve, co-op is locked behind online multiplayer to preserve “atmosphere and immersion”, according to the developer.
While I can understand the intent behind not wanting Little Nightmares to play like a party game, this feels to me like a case of the developers overthinking things. When I began my review, I had a friend over who had beaten the first two games and was eager to jump in, and the fact that I couldn’t just hand them a Joy-Con felt antithetical to the game’s multiplayer hype.
It’s a welcome addition that a Friend’s Pass will be available at launch, allowing you to play with a friend who doesn’t own the game, meaning only one copy needs to be purchased. However, both players will need their own consoles. While cross-generation play between Nintendo Switch and Nintendo Switch 2 is supported, cross-platform play remains unavailable.
Due to these limitations (only a single Switch code was available to us during the review period), I completed my review playthrough in single-player mode, aided by an AI companion, which left things feeling a lot like Little Nightmares II, which paired its single-player mode with a bot, but even more streamlined because in this entry, your CPU partner essentially solves half the puzzles for you, given its two-player cooperative design.
You control one of two new leads: Low, a bow-and-arrow-wielding boy donning a plague doctor mask, and Alone, a girl with pigtails and an aviator helmet equipped with a wrench used for melee combat and puzzling. But what’s really puzzling, though, is the absence of any kind of character swap mechanic tailored specifically for single-player mode.
While your AI-managed companion is generally competent, there were one or two instances where it stood idle or failed to perform key actions, creating soft-lock situations that required checkpoint reloads. Those moments broke immersion and highlighted how the puzzles, clearly designed around teamwork, lose some of their intended satisfaction when played solo.
Puzzles involve synchronising an action with the wrench together with timed arrow shots to manipulate the environment, obtain keys, and traverse obstacles, offering a new wrinkle on otherwise standard fare for the series. Combat situations occurred a lot less frequently than I was expecting, but similarly required a bow and wrench pairing to finish off enemies.
Much like It Takes Two or Split Fiction, you can replay chapters, or the entire game, as either of the two protagonists, experiencing how each character’s unique toolset alters puzzle-solving and exploration. As in previous Little Nightmares entries, collectible items return, cleverly hidden throughout each level to reward curiosity and thorough exploration.
What Little Nightmares III really gets right, though, is its atmosphere, with tension-building and evocative sound design as well as beautifully crafted biomes that bring the series to previously unseen locales, from a haunting arid desertscape with churning mills and updrafts that can be ridden with umbrellas to an abandoned institute on a sub-tropical island teeming with fatal flora.
You will navigate crumbling fairground structures at a surrealist nightmare carnival, evade grotesque adversaries in deliberately slow, nail-biting stealth sequences, and be chased down by monstrous creatures inspired by anxieties surrounding authority and adolescent vulnerability. In other words, it still looks and feels like prior Little Nightmares games.
That said, this entry feels distinctly more ‘by the numbers’ than its predecessors, playing comfortably within established boundaries punctuated by a few modest innovations to gameplay mechanics. Its storytelling unfolds in a similar vein but concludes in a way that felt like the additional chapters of paid DLC — planned for release in 2026 — are needed to fully grasp.
I completed my playthrough in around four to five hours, which makes it as long as past titles, despite having only four chapters, as compared to five in both prior entries. Performance on Switch 2 left much to be desired, essentially feeling like a base Switch build targeting 30fps with soft, grainy visuals and micro-stutters aplenty when the action ramped up.
The end-game boss, in particular, moved in a distracting, almost stop-motion fashion during certain sequences. Though the game’s performance falters — at least at launch — it definitely remains playable despite being a far cry from a ‘next-gen’ third-party experience. Players who are sensitive to performance issues should consider grabbing this one on another platform.
I encountered a frustrating issue in the final chapter where a key item required for progression repeatedly despawned before it finally appeared in its proper location, allowing me to continue. Although the overall gameplay experience was otherwise smooth, this incident suggests that a few lingering bugs and optimisation issues may still be lurking under the hood.
Conclusion
Little Nightmares III faithfully preserves the oppressive mood, clever environmental puzzles, and visceral unease associated with the series, but feels like an echo of what came before. While its dark allure remains potent, the baffling absence of local co-op undercuts the game’s most ambitious feature. Though its multiplayer concept shines in theory, the absence of a character-swap feature to enrich single-player mode feels like another missed opportunity.
