TL;DR: Little Nightmares 3 is haunting, beautiful, and occasionally too safe for its own good. The co-op works better than expected, the world still drips with surreal dread, and even if it doesn’t out-scare its predecessors, it keeps the nightmare alive — and that’s worth celebrating.

There’s a special kind of silence that only lives inside a Little Nightmares game. It’s not the silence of a muted world, but that of a held breath — the split second before a creaking floorboard gives you away, before some grotesque thing in the shadows turns its head toward you. When I booted up Little Nightmares III for the first time, headphones clamped on, the glow of my TV bleeding across my living room wall, I felt that silence again. Familiar, but thinner this time. Like a dream you’ve had too many times, where the details start to fade but the dread still clings to your ribs.

Before I dove into Supermassive Games’ take on Tarsier’s dark fairy tale world, I did what every masochist who loves this series does: I went back. I replayed the first two games — or rather, I relived them. The first Little Nightmaresremains one of the most haunting games I’ve ever played. That first encounter with the Janitor — those impossibly long arms, stretching through the dark, groping for me as I held my breath and prayed I wasn’t pixel-tall enough to matter — it wasn’t just scary. It was intimate. Claustrophobic. The kind of horror that doesn’t scream at you but breathes down your neck.

By the time I finished Little Nightmares II, I remember feeling conflicted. It was gorgeous, yes. Tense, yes. But the grotesque poetry of the first game felt sanded down. The monsters were unsettling, but not unforgettable. It was as if the developers had grown too aware of their own art — pulling punches where they once would’ve swung freely. Little Nightmares III, now under the care of Supermassive Games (of Until Dawn and The Quarry fame), continues that tonal slide into something cleaner, more polished, and yes, a little safer. It’s a game that glows with craft but sometimes forgets to bite.

And yet, I can’t stop thinking about it.

The biggest shift this time around is the addition of co-op. On paper, it’s the kind of feature that should upend the series — a second player changes everything about how isolation, tension, and survival work in a horror setting. But Supermassive treats it with surprising restraint. Little Nightmares III never becomes a chatty, multiplayer romp. Instead, co-op feels like a strange comfort — a flicker of warmth in a world otherwise built from cold, twitching fear. Whether you’re playing with a real partner or the game’s frighteningly capable AI, the bond between its two new characters, Low and Alone, becomes the emotional spine of the entire experience.

Low, armed with a bow and arrow, feels like the precise one — the thinker, the quiet protector. Alone, with their heavy wrench, is the brute force of the duo, a grounded counterweight to Low’s focus. Mechanically, they’re a dream to juggle between — or a nightmare to coordinate, depending on how well your partner can aim under pressure. Together, they give shape to a world that’s always threatening to swallow them whole. When you’re running through collapsing corridors or shimmying across a rotted bridge as some monstrous silhouette looms behind you, the feeling of two tiny figures against a vast, incomprehensible threat hits harder than any scripted scare could.

But that’s where Little Nightmares III starts to wrestle with itself. Because the series has always thrived on loneliness. Six’s journey in the first game wasn’t just a survival story — it was about being utterly, existentially alone in a world that hates your smallness. By introducing companionship, Supermassive has both enriched and diluted that essence. Co-op is fun, yes. Functional, often brilliant, yes. But it comes at a cost: fear is quieter when you’re not facing it alone.

Visually, the game is absurdly good. Like, stop-and-stare-at-the-screenshots good. Supermassive has always understood atmosphere better than most studios, and here, that expertise pays off in droves. Every frame feels meticulously curated — the fog rolling off derelict beaches, the flicker of a dying bulb in an abandoned library, the impossible architecture of buildings that bend like fever dreams. The world still operates on that slippery dream logic that defines the series, where everything feels half-remembered, like a nightmare you can’t quite wake from. It’s not a place that makes sense, and it shouldn’t.

What I missed, though, was the music. The first two games had this eerie, lullaby-like soundtrack that threaded itself through every moment, reminding you that even the terror was a kind of twisted bedtime story. Here, Supermassive dials it way back. Outside of a few heart-pounding chase scenes, the silence dominates. On one hand, it makes the creaks, whispers, and distant sobs stand out more — the sound design itself is impeccable. But on the other, it feels like a missing limb. The absence of those haunting tunes robs the game of some of its emotional rhythm. It’s like watching a ghost move its mouth but hearing no song.

Let’s talk about the monsters. Because if you’ve played this series, you know that’s where the nightmares live. The first game gave us the Janitor, the Twin Chefs, and the Lady — creatures that burrowed into your subconscious like parasitic thoughts. The second game gave us the Teacher, the Thin Man — unsettling, yes, but not nearly as iconic. The third? Well, here’s the thing. Little Nightmares III has its share of villains, and some of them are effectively creepy. There’s a puppet master who manipulates human-sized marionettes across a crumbling carnival, a drowned woman who whispers lullabies through pipes, a faceless conductor who drags his body along the rails like an echo of industrial dread. They’re good. Memorable even, for a moment. But they never reach the mythic heights of that first encounter with the Janitor’s stretching hands or the Chefs’ grotesque feast of flesh.

It’s not that Supermassive doesn’t know how to do horror — far from it. They’re masters of the genre. But they’re too good at it in a cinematic sense. Too controlled. Tarsier’s Little Nightmares felt like peeking into someone’s fever dream, unstable and wrong. Supermassive’s version feels like watching that dream recreated on a movie set. The camera angles are perfect. The lighting immaculate. And in that perfection, a little of the madness dies.

Mechanically, Little Nightmares III is the tightest of the trilogy. The puzzle-platforming flows beautifully. The addition of a true Z-axis (running toward and away from the camera) makes every chase sequence feel dynamic and three-dimensional. But that same depth sometimes works against you. I found myself misjudging jumps or tumbling off edges not because I was careless, but because the perspective tricked me. It’s the kind of frustration that feels almost nostalgic now — an inherited quirk of the series. The game’s generosity with checkpoints helps, but when you’re being chased by something with too many teeth and not enough face, having to redo the same sequence three times in a row can still drain the adrenaline out of your veins.

Supermassive’s biggest win here is how they integrate the co-op mechanics into puzzle-solving. Low and Alone’s abilities often interlock in clever ways: one holds a crank while the other climbs, one shoots a button while the other hauls a rope. It’s smooth, intuitive, and satisfying when it works. But when it doesn’t — when a mistimed shot or clumsy grab forces a restart — it can make you wish for the simpler days of solitary panic.

And yet, when you and your partner finally nail a tough sequence — when you both survive by the skin of your teeth, panting in the aftermath of digital terror — the shared triumph feels earned. There’s a particular kind of joy in surviving something awful together, even if that something awful is a digital nightmare rendered in stunning Unreal Engine detail.

What surprised me most about Little Nightmares III wasn’t how much it scared me, but how often it made me nostalgic. Not just for the earlier games, but for the feeling of discovering something that truly unsettled me for the first time. The original Little Nightmares crawled under my skin because it didn’t care if I understood it. It wasn’t trying to explain itself. It was content to be unknowable. Supermassive’s take, by contrast, feels like it’s trying to honor that mystery while still making it digestible. Like it’s afraid of losing us in the fog.

And yet, there are glimpses — moments when the old spirit claws its way back to the surface. One late-game sequence in a crumbling apartment building, where shadows seem to move just a heartbeat after you do, is pure Little Nightmares. Another, where you have to hide under a warped bed as a creature drags itself across the floorboards whispering names, made me genuinely pause the game just to breathe. In those flashes, Supermassive proves they understand what makes this world work. They just haven’t quite figured out how to own it yet.

I’ve seen people call Little Nightmares III a “transitional” entry, and I think that’s exactly right. It feels like the franchise standing at a crossroads — one foot in the surreal grotesquery of Tarsier’s creation, the other in Supermassive’s sleek cinematic horror. It’s faithful to what came before, sometimes to a fault. It plays the right notes but rarely writes new music. It’s beautiful, chilling, and deeply familiar. But it’s also safe.

And maybe that’s okay. Maybe every nightmare needs a breather before it dives back into the abyss.

Because despite my criticisms, I loved being back in this world. I loved its textures, its sounds, its dreadful sense of wonder. I loved holding my breath again, even if I could predict when to exhale. Little Nightmares III may not rekindle the full horror of the first game, but it doesn’t extinguish the flame either. It keeps it alive — dimmer, yes, but still flickering. Still whispering that somewhere in the shadows, something is waiting for you.

Final Verdict: 

Supermassive Games takes the reins of the Little Nightmares series and delivers a gorgeously eerie sequel that’s more polished than petrifying. Its co-op mechanics breathe new life into the formula, even as its monsters feel a touch too familiar. It’s a worthy continuation — not a revelation, but a dream worth returning to.