Review: Little Nightmares III (PS5)

Playing through Little Nightmares III feels like slipping back into a familiar dream, one longtime fans will recognise the moment it begins.

Supermassive Games hasn’t tried to reinvent the series in any wild way, opting instead to mirror the grotesque horror and endearing puzzles that have defined Little Nightmares from the start.

This is also the first entry not crafted by Tarsier Studios, and we’ll admit we had our doubts, especially with the Until Dawn developer introducing online-only co-op to the threequel.

Not that it mattered. Despite our best efforts (and we really did try), we never actually managed to play co-op. Somehow, organising a session during the review period turned out to be the biggest puzzle of all. But honestly, going solo ended up being exactly what we wanted from the game.

Little Nightmares III is a puzzle-platformer where you play as either Low or Alone. Two iddy-biddy best mates trying to find their way back home. Set in the Spiral, an all-new cluster of disturbing locales from a creepy carnival to a twisted candy factory, the game has you and your companion solving environmental puzzles, and stealthily avoiding capture by some genuinely gruesome antagonists.

By stepping away from the familiar sights and sounds of The Maw and Pale City, Supermassive raised eyebrows about diluting the very essence of what made Little Nightmares so memorable: its connected, dark, and deeply unsettling universe. Concerns that feel a bit daft now that we’ve completed the game’s 4 to 6 hour adventure. Twice.

Unlike the first two games, which were split into five chapters, Little Nightmares III is divided into four, with two DLC chapters planned for the future. Over the course of your journey, you’ll creep through the corpse-lined Necropolis, wade through the sticky lollipop pits of the Candy Factory, and sneak along some generic hallways of the Institute.

Each chapter runs about an hour for first-time players, though the third, Carnevale, stretches a little longer, a twisted rollercoaster through rain-lashed tents and flickering lights.

Supermassive Games clearly understands the aesthetic language of Little Nightmares, capturing that larger-than-life scale, tension, and detail with aplomb. Yet beneath the Spiral’s fresh facades lies a strong sense of déjà vu.

Many puzzles, sequences, and set pieces feel lifted straight from the earlier games, leaving the world more familiar than frightening. In the opening hour, we even found ourselves evading the gaze of Necropolis’s towering Monster Baby, a near carbon copy of the janitor’s bucket puzzle from the original Little Nightmares.

While we could talk at length about the game’s new cast of horrid antagonists, and now would be the time to do so, we’re hesitant to reveal too much. Supermassive’s game strikes many of the same notes as its predecessors, and the least we can do is let you run in fear from its gross villains.

Little Nightmares III looks and sounds exactly like a Little Nightmares game — as it should. The biggest shake-up is, of course, the focus on co-op, a first for the series.

You’ll lob shoes at out-of-reach buttons, crawl through claustrophobic wall vents, and at one point clamber over a magician’s sawing box — which may or may not contain a severed human corpse — just to navigate the oversized world. With all the hallmarks and polish of a good platformer It’s simple enough to pull off, but you’ll likely need a strong stomach to get through it.

In the past, solo players did everything themselves — pushing boxes, pressing buttons, and smashing creepy doll children with an oversized wrench. Here, the head crushing duties, amongst others, are split in two, with little meaningful change to the formula.

You’ll have to pick your preferred role right from the start, choosing between two playable protagonists. As Low, the raven-masked wanderer, you wield a bow capable of cutting ropes, shooting buttons, and taking the heads off those same reused creepy doll children — the first step in a two-part combo.

For our playthrough, we went with Alone — her bright red pigtails and oversized jumpsuit won us over. She carries a slightly less impressive wrench than in Little Nightmares II, but can still smash through walls, activate mechanisms, and deliver step two by crushing the aforementioned dolls’ horrid little heads to dust.

Simply put, one can’t progress without the other — a co-op platitude we wouldn’t mind as much if Supermassive had introduced more variation in the puzzles. They’re not bad, not by any stretch of an elongated arm, but we’ve faced these challenges before. Only now we’re whispering instructions to our partner to avoid being mauled by the same familiar foes. Something that left us unconvinced in our final preview of the game.

Remember, we played Little Nightmares III solo, which meant rolling the dice on an AI companion. It’s always a gamble relying heavily on a bot to handle core tasks without it driving you up the wall — being in the right spot, firing arrows at the nearest threat, and not spoiling the solution to a puzzle.

Before our first playthrough, we hoped the AI would behave like Six in Little Nightmares II, and to our delight, it did, letting us bark commands at Low with minimal frustration. Sure, it reduces half the game’s puzzles to the press of a button, and we were sad our little bot bud didn’t want to play catch with us between scares, but we’re glad Little Nightmares III has one of the good AIs.

That said, If we can’t have local co-op, the ability to swap between characters at each interval would have been a welcome feature for the single-player purists.

A final word on performance: we reviewed Little Nightmares III on a standard PS5, playing roughly 90% of the game in Beauty mode for that extra pop of detail. That was just our preference, as there’s little visual difference between modes. However you choose to play, though, the game runs smoothly from start to finish.

Conclusion
Little Nightmares III is a nightmare worth having, even if you’ve dreamt it all before. Supermassive Games holds a mirror to the franchise, reflecting the series’ charming horror, clever puzzles, and grotesque universe. But it plays it safe, adding little in the way of originality. Online co-op is the biggest change, but solo play remains the preferred experience. Overall, Little Nightmares III is unsettling enough to make your skin crawl — just not enough to wake you up.