Low and Alone do not make a great first impression...
Tarsier Studios may have been acquired by Embracer Group, but Little Nightmares lives on at Bandai Namco, now under the care of Dark Pictures‘ Supermassive Games. Though the masters of narrative horror nail the look and feel of the franchise, it itself may be a little long in the tooth, and poorly conceived.
You don’t just have to take my word for it, though — you can take that of my co-op partner: my husband. Little Nightmares 3 offers up a franchise first in online co-op, so I called in a favour and had him play alongside me (well, alongside me in a different room). That arrangement lasted all of thirty minutes.
You see, Little Nightmares 3 doesn’t put its best foot forward. For starters, it defaults to “Beauty” mode, and as such — and pretty much consistent across both PS5 and PS5 Pro for some reason — has immediate, reproducible, ridiculous framerate drops as protagonists Low and Alone move from one screen to another. Little Nightmares 3 doesn’t offer couch co-op, and I’m ignoring whatever reasons Supermassive and Bandai Namco have provided because I’m convinced the game couldn’t muster it. “Performance” mode is far more stable; given the way that “Beauty” chugs, players shouldn’t even be offered a choice.
Little Nightmares 3 also controls poorly. Right at its start, my husband and I put a box into position to platform over to a higher area. The trouble was, neither of us could actually get up on top of said box. That was on us; we needed to not only jump, but to press RT to then grab the edge of the box and pull ourselves up.
The problem, though — and I’m getting ahead of myself slightly but need to make this divergence — was that inconsistency followed. Some ledges require RT to grab, and others don’t. The latter, I need to point out, actively reject your attempt to clamber up if you press RT. We spent five minutes trying to grab a moving hook because of this, and partially because of tricky depth perception as it was moving toward the screen.
But back to the beginning; as we both believed we couldn’t jump to box and then to higher area, we moved forward through the level, arriving at another, smaller, set of ledges. It took me five jumps to get from ground level to the next ledge, which was knee height of my character, because I kept slamming into an invisible wall rather than getting on top of the ledge. Then, I must have taken an eighth of a step too much attempting to jump to the next ledge, because my character didn’t even bother to try and simply fell down. It took me four more jumps to get back up to try again.
While Little Nightmares 3 has a natural core of trial and error — common with games like Limbo, Inside, or Somerville — unnecessary layers of frustration, like the ones I’ve detailed above, shouldn’t also factor in. It’s also repetitive and buggy, and that causes additional problems.
If you’re not solving puzzles — which are relatively infrequent — you’re moving from screen to screen, ducking under planks, climbing ladders, or crouch-walking through vents. You’ll encounter a level’s baddie, and will need to hide from their glare, then survive a chase sequence that features them.
Most of the hiding sequences will be an instant fail, as you’ll run into a new room and catch an eye before you realise you should have stopped. While that’s fine in itself, less than gracious checkpointing means you’ll just be reliving unnecessary bits to get back to where you failed.
What’s unforgiveable is that a lot of these sequences are broken; without moving, and behind cover, level bosses randomly would spot me and deliver their one-hit kill, meaning I had to go back to my last checkpoint. I say “my” because my husband had long since given up by that point and I was playing instead with an AI co-op partner.
Chase sequences are problematic as well, as most require your character to sprint. That’s accomplished through a toggle — on PS5, the Square button — and it’s a bit tricky to see if you’ve successfully toggled that speed or not. Most sequences do not allow for failure, so if you waste a second or two on seeing if you’re running fast, you’re already dead.
I said before that puzzles are “relatively infrequent”, but I need to point out here that I’m sure there are more puzzles than I encountered simply because I didn’t want to explore the unbeaten path. After feeling like I was beating my head against a wall with it for so long, I consistently tracked down the main path. There’s something to be said there, too — if I could point out bits that I didn’t need to engage with, that means design is somewhat lacking.
Props to Supermassive for keeping with vibe of Little Nightmares, but I’d much prefer it the developer focused work on what it’s very, very good at. This one, sadly, isn’t it.
If you’re a fan of Little Nightmares, or similar games in this genre — and, are willing to overlook some pretty loose design — then you’ll find enjoyment in this; a $60 AUD price point also helps. Otherwise, you’re better off steering clear, or engaging with other co-op titles like It Takes Two. If you’re on the fence, a demo is available, though it doesn’t offer progression into the main game proper.
Little Nightmares 3 heads to Windows PC, Xbox One, Xbox Series S, Xbox Series X, PS4, PS5, and Switch 2 on 10 October.
Little Nightmares 3 was reviewed using a promotional code on PS5 and PS5 Pro, as provided by the publisher. Click here to learn more about Stevivor’s scoring scale.
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Little Nightmares 310 October 2025PC PS4 PS5 Switch Switch 2 Xbox One Xbox Series S & X
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