Little Nightmares III Review

Little Nightmares III keeps the thing the series does best. The Nowhere is a diorama of beautiful, sickening spaces, oversized and wrong, and moving two small children through it while something enormous hunts them is still a specific and effective kind of horror. The art direction carries the whole game, from a windblown desert city to a toy factory that should not be, and the set piece chases remain tense in the moment.

The change this time is company. Low and Alone are a pair, built for two players in online cooperative play or with an AI companion, and that decision cuts both ways. Sharing the fear with a friend is genuinely fun, but a horror game is scariest alone, and the presence of a second body, human or bot, softens the isolation the first two games traded on. The puzzles are gentle and the platforming is simple, so the challenge rarely rises to meet the atmosphere.

At forty dollars it is a fair price for a handsome, moody, six to eight hour trip, best taken with someone you like. Just know that the cooperative design that makes it social is the same choice that makes it less frightening. Come for the art and the dread, temper the expectation of terror.