With fall now in season, it’s the perfect time to play the scary horror games that fit in perfectly with the spooky vibes that carried on from Halloween. Little Nightmares is a great series to fit the atmosphere of horror, with terrifying monsters searching for you, and the environment being so creepy that it feels like it’s watching a player’s every move. The franchise’s success brought about attention from the media, creating additional games, a comic series, novels, and a podcast. But with the third installment, it feels more washed down and less scary.
Unlike the previous installments, Little Nightmares III has co-op support to play as either Alone or Low, the recurring protagonists of the series. However, co-op can only be used for online play and not in-person gameplay, which limits how it can be used with friends. Low is a boy with a crow mask and cape who uses a bow to either defend himself or to solve puzzles. Alone is a girl who has covered up her face and accompanies Low on their quest to escape the Nowhere, a realm where all your nightmares come true. With a wrench that can fix machinery and break down objects, Low can also teleport to different locations using mirrors, which is important for the game’s story.
With the option to select from our two main characters, Alone and Low, I chose to play as Low for his bow and arrow. To escape Nowhere, the duo travels through the Spiral, a mix of dangerous environments that you have to learn to survive in. To escape, you’ll have to make it past locations like the Carnevale, a twisted carnival inhabited by a monster called the Kin, accompanied by his companion, the Mini-Kin. To escape the Spiral and its dangers, you’ll need to solve puzzles with physics or with the character’s abilities. Throughout their journey, it felt a bit boring to go through, as it felt like a walking simulator most of the time, with enemy chases and puzzles blocking your way from time to time.
Little Nightmares III also tries its best to encapsulate the environmental creepiness of the previous games. Though it shines in some areas, I feel like the game isn’t trying hard enough to embrace the horror it’s well known for.
It feels more washed and polished instead of grimy, greasy, and more naturally ugly. Environments like the Factory seem less grimy than they should be. Compared to locations like the Maw in the first Little Nightmares, the levels in this game don’t have that same dirty and horrific vibe, which was what made Little Nightmares so popular.
Like its predecessors, Little Nightmares III can have easily accomplished puzzles or threatening chases, with an enemy hunting you down. Whatever situation you get in, the encounters in this game seem more lenient than puzzles from previous games. For example, since I had played in single-player mode, I was only able to use Low’s ability to progress, but I needed two players to progress through the game. Fortunately, the AI companion does help out on the two-player puzzles. Unfortunately, it’s either that the AI solves it instantly or takes a while to get to where you need it to be to complete the puzzle. While the game also gives you a mechanic that calls out to the other characters, it doesn’t seem to work all the time.
Compared to the other games in the series, Little Nightmares III is the weakest of all of them. The game has a lack of scares for the players, as well as a washed down look instead of filthy, failing to fit the grimy art style of the previous installments. The gameplay feels more mediocre instead of something that stands out.
Even though this game incorporates co-op, it’s only online co-op instead of local, meaning that you can’t play it with a friend in person, limiting the amount of fun players could have. Since I played this game by myself, the AI companion was a bit buggy. As mentioned before, the companion can either not help out on the puzzles at all or solve them for you, which didn’t improve my experience playing the game. Little Nightmares II did have a similar mechanic to this game, having one of the protagonists in that game be an AI companion, but they didn’t instantly solve any puzzles; they were just a part of them as support. I feel like if they did something similar to that in Little Nightmares III, the single-player mode would’ve been more enjoyable.
Overall, Little Nightmares III is a decent game, but it doesn’t stand out like the previous two. There isn’t much that adds to the creep factor that makes the Little Nightmares franchise iconic. The graphics do look great, but I feel like they don’t really fit in with the style that Little Nightmares has established. The game also heavily relies on co-op, which gives you the option of dealing with a buggy AI companion or buying the full game, while only being able to play with another player who paid the full price. I still had fun solving the puzzles that the game provided, but I feel like the game could’ve done more.
