The first Little Nightmares came at an opportune time. With folks hungry for more of the dark-but-approachable brand of horror/platformer that developers like Playdead had perfected in the years prior, it instantly built itself a following and eventually garnered a similarly-successful sequel effort. With a third entry just a few weeks away, I’d say there’s a bit of pressure to deliver once again, and uniquely to deliver something that builds on previous efforts without treading too close a path. In a bid to understand how that effort is going, I was recently able to sample a sizable chunk of the game with another member of the local media by my side.
The section of the game we played in this recent preview took place at an appropriately-creepy carnival, complete with hulking, mindless show-goers shuffling from one amusement to the next with little agency and gorging themselves on anything in reach. It’s all very in line with the typical Little Nightmares vibe, painting your immediate surroundings as moody, abstracted scenes soaked in darkness but with just enough light to glimpse all manner of glib and grotesque. Despite the handover from Tarsier Studios to Supermassive Games (of Until Dawn fame), this hour-and-a-bit vignette felt as familiar as ever.
The big shake-up here is, of course, the inclusion of full cooperative play. It’s a natural evolution of some of what we saw with Little Nightmares II’s Mono and Six, but this time with a choice to play as either Low or Alone and the ability to have another human inhabit the second role, or again leave it to the AI.
It also means you’ve got two slightly different gameplay paths on offer, with the raven–masked Low wielding a bow and the mechanically-inclined Alone making use of a (comparatively) large wrench. As you’d expect, these two distinct weapons factor into Little Nightmares III’s cooperative puzzle solving and combat, with each character bringing their unique abilities to the solutions. Though in this preview segment of the game there were only a handful of moments where my co-op partner and I, playing as Alone and Low respectively, found the need to fill our specific purposes in tandem. More often, our parts to play were interchangeable, which is something I hope will shift over time in the full game.
When Low and Alone are blessed with the opportunity to use their unique accoutrements, it’s all thankfully as simple as you’d hope for from a Little Nightmares. Low automatically aims at anything nearby that will interact with the end of an arrow in some way, giving you clear visual and haptic feedback that you’re good to go. I didn’t play as Alone at all, but she’s obviously quite straightforward in function. I did observe some funky control hang-ups, like not being able to progress through most doorways or crevices without manually putting away your weapon first, and the movement physics in general are as awkward as ever.
Direct combat isn’t something you’d usually associate with this series, but there were actually some big chunks of it here. While stealth was regularly the best and only option, some sequences locked us into scuffles with creepy, rabid dolls in period clothing whose heads could be lopped off by a well-placed shot from Low, and then crushed under the weight of Alone’s wrench to render their still-hungry bodies limp. I’m still torn as to whether I prefer the ability to fight back in my horror-adjacent video games, or if my own fragility remains the scariest possible mechanic, but I think these infrequent bouts of action will go alright.
I’m gonna have to be honest here, though – I think I’d still prefer to play Little Nightmares III solo. I absolutely had fun going through the twisted carnival, cracking puzzles and running for my life with a (very patient) actual person backing me up. And these games have always benefited from shared experience, even passively. But it lends the whole thing a markedly different feel that seems like it might take the edge off of the atmosphere a touch.
Perhaps it was my awkwardness in the room, but I found myself cracking jokes or sharing exasperated laughs with my co-op partner as we came afoul of mishaps in our playthrough, rather than fully locking into the tone of the piece. There were a couple sequences where having a second liability in the mix made Little Nightmares’ tendency towards trial-and-error enemy encounters all the more frustrating as well, so you’re definitely going to want someone on board who’s willing to chuckle at theirs and your mistakes. When you’re wincing in unison at the need to pry off the back end of a ‘sawing a person in half’ trick gone wrong to use as a platform, it’s exactly what you’d want from this game, but when your neighbour has to perform the same, clumsy platforming sequence for the eight time because you’re struggling with the middle of it? Less cool.
All of that might make it sound like I’m sour on this third go-round, or at least on its multiplayer addition, but I’m still very keen to play more after this short sample. It does seem like Supermassive Games’ take on Little Nightmares is poised to hit many of the same beats as its predecessors, so if the others resonated with you I’m sure this will, too. I’ll be content to see the full thing push these new ideas further, and Low and Alone’s synergy deepen over time, but that will all become clear when the game releases on October 10 for PlayStation, Xbox, Switch and PC.
Previewed on PC at an event hosted by Bandai Namco Entertainment Australia
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