Little Nightmares III hands-on report

There’s a very specific moment in Little Nightmares III that encapsulates the game so perfectly that it sticks with me long after I’ve finished my hands-on. Bandai Namco’s demo, ahead of the game’s PS5 and PS4 release on October 10, knew exactly what it was doing.

Picture the scene: I’ve assumed the pigtailed Alone, partner to the raven-masked Low, who is controlled by Bandai Namco’s Global Project Manager Lina Chaghouri. About 40 minutes in, we’re trapped in a shadow-soaked room containing an eerily unmoving man lying in a magician’s box – the type that typically has the magician sawn in half but still miraculously remains whole at the end of the performance. Our only way out? Via an exit too high to reach.

After a minute, I realise that the body’s exposed feet act as a handle. Grim. So I guide Alone over to it and pull. With Lina’s help, the box eventually splits into two, but so does the man. His entrails messily leak out as we guide the box to the end of the room so we can escape. It’s macabre, darkly humorous, and demonstrates the essential co-operation that makes Little Nightmares III so wonderfully compelling.

Expanding from Little Nightmares II

It also happens to be a favourite moment of Coralie Feniello, Bandai Namco’s Global Producer on the game. “In concept, it’s quite simple – pulling, pushing, picking up stuff are all tactile actions that make you feel like a child in that world. And this one is just pulling two boxes, but the setup and the setting of the place makes it memorable. I love having the player do something which is kind of immoral, but it’s the only way for them to get out of a situation.”

Fans of the popular horror puzzle platformer series will find these sorts of gruesome scenarios familiar. But what separates Little Nightmares III – thankfully without the entrails – from its siblings is the game’s focus on co-op play. While Little Nightmares II eventually allowed you to journey with an AI companion, its sequel not only has this feature from the start but also lets a second player control either Low or Alone, as a fully-fledged two-player game.

“We learned things from Little Nightmares II and did a lot of playtests,” reveals Coralie. “We basically had to design the game three times, including adding things like cute flavour animations that are specific to single player. We started by designing the multiplayer first, because we wanted to make sure that the AI would behave like a human player. And through every playtest we’ve done, we’ve been checking the player’s enjoyment.”

Balancing horror with a friend

Chances are, another frightening thought might now be creeping into your head – does the addition of human co-op diminish the scares? “Maintaining horror during co-op can be complicated and was something we thought about a lot at the beginning of development,” says Coralie. “Supermassive Games has been doing multiplayer on the Dark Pictures Anthology for years now, and so it was good for us to work with them on that aspect.

“From early playtests, we found that it was fine, and actually created a different type of atmosphere. Sometimes you’ll have players who will get scared because the other player is scared, out of empathy. You’ll also share laughs and experience a wider range of emotions, but I don’t think it’s breaking the scariness.”

This tallied with my experience, where the presence of another player created a co-dependency that brought its own sense of dread. Little Nightmares III is driven not just by its creaking, rain-swept, and murky atmosphere but also by tense set pieces where poor collaboration leads to a speedy death. The enemies in the Carnevale demo, both misshapen and grotesque giants and terrifyingly quick puppets, caught Lina and I lacking many times.

Sometimes it was because I wasn’t quick enough to smash the decapitated skulls that Lina shot off as the headless puppets stalked her. Another time was an elaborate multi-tiered hide and seek section, which required us to sneak around a kitchen while a giant fed the guts of a corpse to his screaming puppet child. We needed to grab a crank while they were distracted, and I either was too slow to grab it or to find a hiding space after snatching it, resulting in a swift end. I’m used to stomaching my own mistakes, but the pressure to ensure my partner didn’t suffer from my slights only added to the tension.  

“What’s interesting is that things sometimes take longer to solve in multiplayer,” says Coralie. “You’d think that having two brains makes you go faster, but instead you fight or discuss. It’s not necessarily easier to solve a puzzle.”

The power of visual storytelling

Despite its intimidating rooms of sudden lightning flashes, rabid chattering puppets, and unidentified things being beaten like a piñata, there are plenty of other, less horrifying moments in Little Nightmares III that rely on fun cooperation. During my time, we hoisted each other up to platforms, repeatedly jumped on a stubborn trapdoor to break through it, and one part had Low open a furnace hatch in order for me to throw coal into it, which activated platforms for us to proceed.

A reliance on each other and keenly observing the environment was essential to staying alive, given that the series’ creative choice of keeping its characters mostly voiceless is continued here. “That was quite complicated when conveying moments of the story,” says Coralie. “So we put more elements into the environment instead of having a lot of cutscenes.”

It’s a design philosophy extended to the creation of its characters, too. “We always start with a shape,” explains Coralie. “So pigtails for Alone, and the beak for Low. Then you really need also to have some bright colors like the blue cape and green jumpsuit, because that’s super important in a dark environment, but that’s a core pillar of what we call a ‘charming horror’ game, where the children are a ray of hope in it all.”

It’s essential to hang on to that hope when you’re surrounded by terrifying, wide-eyed puppets that lurk and loom. You and a friend will be able to see for yourself when Little Nightmares III launches on October 10.