Sigmund Freud believed that the power of anxiety comes from placing something strange inside something that would otherwise be ordinary. Dolls, waxworks, settings, scenarios, people who are simply not normal. It’s familiar, but strange enough to feel wrong and make us feel uneasy. I couldn’t stop thinking about anxiety while playing Little Nightmares 3. A sense of growing dread permeated my time with the game, but I also felt compelled to go forward, see more, and unravel the mysteries of this world. It’s a fine line, but during my hour-long play session, Little Nightmares 3 managed to pull it off and leave me wanting more when the “Thanks for Playing” screen informed me that my time was up.
Little Nightmares 3 may be the third game in the series, but it offers a lot of firsts for the series. It’s the first game to be developed without series creator Tarsier Studios. Instead, Supermassive Games, the team behind Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology, and The Quarry, is at the helm. Likewise, it’s the first game in the series to feature co-op gameplay and the first to be a standalone sequel. You don’t have to have played the first two Little Nightmares games to understand this one, and as someone who’s never played a Little Nightmares game before, I didn’t have much trouble following along.
The first thing I noticed about Little Nightmares was the way it built atmosphere. It looks great, but what really caught my attention was how it used lightweight and shadow to emphasize things you often don’t want to see, or hide things you do want to see. Little Nightmares 3 understands that the scariest things are often the things you can’t see, or the ones you only see for a moment, and it’s keen to tease you and build a sense of impending doom before the huge reveal.
Then there’s the audio design; Little Nightmares 3 makes great exploit of ambient sounds and ambient noise to heighten the tension. Whether it’s the still sound of soccer balls, the hefty machinery of a candy factory (more on that in a moment), or the creaking of an aged board that might be stable enough to slide you through that gap, Little Nightmares 3 uses what you hear in the environment to keep you on your toes. And that ambient noise? Seriously creepy.
The kids are not okay
Little Nightmares 3 tells the story of Low and Alone, two kids desperately searching for a way out of Nowhere. Low and Alone didn’t talk in the sections I played, but you can feel their relationship in the diminutive moments when they check up on each other or support each other out. These two characters clearly know and care about each other, and there’s a tenderness in these diminutive moments that sells it, no dialogue needed. I hope it lasts, but it’s a horror game. A lot can go wrong.
No matter who you play as, you’ll be doing a lot of the same things: jumping over obstacles, pushing blocks, navigating narrow paths over very long drop-offs, and generally solving puzzles to progress through the Spiral. But what makes them fascinating is their equipment. Alone has a key that he can exploit to turn cranks, activate switches, and even destroy walls. Low, on the other hand, wields a bow that lets him hit switches from afar, scare away birds carrying a key you might need, or shoot down a chest hanging on a thread from the ceiling.
There are also some problems that you simply can’t solve alone. Sometimes that means strengthening your partner to be able to flip a switch. Other times, one of you will need to carry a lightweight to scatter the bugs that would otherwise attack you, while the other uses the safety of the lightweight to climb a ladder and find a way forward. And sometimes you just need an extra pair of hands to open a hefty door.
The puzzles I saw in Little Nightmares 3 weren’t necessarily arduous, but they always kept my partner and I working together and communicating. Little Nightmares 3 works well without a second player – instead, they’re replaced by an AI version of any character you’re not playing, who you can call upon if you need support, and who will sometimes show you the way forward – but cooperative play is definitely the way to go.
In one particularly memorable scene, my real-life partner and I had to hide from a very scary woman with too many arms, avoiding her and figuring out how to proceed before she noticed us. It’s in these moments that Little Nightmares 3 shines.
Horror, Horror
It would be remiss of me not to mention the environments that make all of this possible. I saw two parts of the Spiral while I was playing Little Nightmares 3. The first was the Candy Factory, a monstrous installation that was very uncomfortable to navigate because you knew you weren’t alone.
In addition to the creepy woman with too many arms, the building was inhabited by unnatural workers suspended from the ceiling and the terrifying hum of machinery. It was eerie in all the best ways; something distinctly familiar, but also deeply wrong. I compensated by naming each of the lollipops we ran into Steve and carrying them around with me for as long as I could. Every time we parted ways, I was devastated. Thankfully, there was always another Steve on the horizon.
The second was Necropolis, an abandoned ruin in the desert. While the Candy Factory is unsettling because you’re not alone, Necropolis builds dread by reminding you that you are. Each location raises more questions than it answers. Who is the Candy Factory making all those lollipops for? Who are those people hanging from the ceiling? What are all those bodies doing in Necropolis? What happened here? And are we really alone? During my time with it, Little Nightmares 3 balanced unsettling and fascinating, and while I was concerned about what was around the corner, I also wanted to see more and piece together the answers.
If there’s one thing I don’t like about Little Nightmares 3, it’s the lack of local co-op. That said, you can play online with a friend, even if only one of you owns the game, which pretty much makes up for it.
When my time with Little Nightmares 3 came to an end, I was sorrowful to say goodbye to Low and Alone, but I wanted to revisit the earlier games and see what I had missed. Little Nightmares 3 is unsettling in the way that a horror game should be, while also being an engaging co-op game that motivates you to push through the tension to see what’s around the corner. In fact, you could even call the balance uncanny. If Supermassive Games can continue down this path, Low and Alone will have a truly fascinating journey. I hope they succeed.
