Little Nightmares III Review (PC) – A Familiar Fear

Little Nightmares is a unique series that places you in the shoes of a small character navigating around much larger, terrifying enemies through a world filled with horror-themed challenges. Little Nightmares II introduced a second character to aid in your escape, and now Little Nightmares III takes things even further by allowing a second player to join the adventure. After previewing the game at PAX West 2024, the full release is finally here, and The Outerhaven’s Little Nightmares III review explores what makes this latest entry both haunting and unforgettable.

Game Name: Little Nightmares III
Platform(s): PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch, Nintendo Switch 2, PC (Reviewed)
Developer(s): Supermassive Games
Publisher(s): Bandai Namco
Release Date: October 10th, 2025
Price: $39.99

Little Nightmares III has you playing as either Low, a boy with a bow and a mask, or Alone, a girl with goggles and a wrench. You need to navigate to these mirrors to help you leave the realm known as the Spiral. You can play with a friend online or with a computer-controlled ally. Each mirror will transport both of you to a new location in the Spiral as you travel farther and farther up it.

Traversing Up the Spiral

For the bulk of my playthrough, I was Alone, and Keith played Low. Alone has a wrench that can destroy weak spots in wood or in glass. Low can shoot arrows to loosen ropes or bring shelves crashing down on top of you. These were used in solving puzzles in the 3D platformer space. Just like in the previous games, Little Nightmares III will have you exploring scary locales infested with giant looming figures. Generally, each location you visit will have a giant figure that will take notice of you, that you will need to either run away from or creatively defeat.

There is a dedicated grab button that you will forget to hold on to as you do jumps, or at least I did. You will need to jump, then grab to climb on top of ledges. You will also need to hold the grab button to climb ladders. It wasn’t all that frustrating, honestly, as one jump with forgetting will just remind you about making sure you hold on to the grab button for the next jump. The grab button is also important to hold on to items like the battery fixtures you will need to use to turn on the power to elevators.

One of the best parts of Little Nightmares III are the puzzles, as they can feel extremely satisfying to figure out to get to the next area of the location. Shooting down wagons to get on top of, breaking a head off a doll to get a key, or even sneaking to the right position to hide from the giant threats in the room. They are all necessary to progress in the game. Most of the time, these were fun to figure out, especially when you are playing with a friend.

A Strong Visual Aesthetic

Most of the time, the puzzles in Little Nightmares III are satisfying, but some of the time, they can be frustrating. The strong essence of Little Nightmares as a series is the 3D visuals on a 2D-esque plane. You will be platforming, jumping, and running side to side most of the time. The jumping can mess with you as the items may be closer to the foreground or background, but you won’t be able to figure it out just based on looking at it. You will have to jump toward the ledge and hope that you jump to the actual item. This isn’t always the case, as even being a bit off can mean you lose the jump and maybe even the momentum to finish the platforming. If you fall all the way down, sometimes it will take you back to the checkpoint. In multiplayer mode, it can even be that both of you fail if one of you falls. It can also mean one of you fails and the other one continues their climb as if nothing happened. The unfortunate thing is that there isn’t a lot of consistency in that regard.

The visuals in Little Nightmares III look amazing, probably the best this series has ever looked. Supermassive Games put a lot of effort into the lighting, the effects of rot on food or guts that can appear on the screen from a dead corpse. It shines on the giant scope of these enemies, too. There will be moments that have hands reaching from the top of wooden boards trying to grab you, or an eyeball shining a light looking for you. These moments pump you up with adrenaline, as you don’t want to go back to the previous checkpoint and have to redo encounters.

One small nitpick with the checkpoint system I want to add. The placement for the checkpoints is good, and there are a lot of checkpoints in the game. This helps with not having to redo as many puzzles or encounters. However, it feels slow and sluggish getting back into the action since both Low and Alone start at the checkpoint sitting down, and you have to stand up to go back to the room to retry the puzzle or encounter. It feels really prevalent when you need to restart a chase sequence.

On my PC running an NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super, this game was at a locked 120 FPS and 1080p. It felt very smooth to play. We played without the day 1 patch, so there were some bugs occasionally with jumping, and in one puzzle, a very large one that made us unable to progress at all. Once I reset to the beginning of the chapter and redid everything, it worked itself out. So, in case you get any bugs on the PC version, try resetting your progress up to the current chapter and see if that can help fix your problem.

Headsets Are Required For Maximum Enjoyment

Little Nightmares III shines the greatest, in my opinion, in the sound department. Footsteps, screeches, and glass shattering all tend to surprise you. You can hear unsettling sounds on every level of the game. This also helps you understand that a chase sequence is about to happen because you can hear them a few screens before they show up, and it is unsettling the whole way. While you are in the vents on one level, you can hear an enemy in the vents next to you trying to find you, and it makes for quite the experience when you finally meet back up with them.

This might be due to us playing without the day 1 patch, but in the cutscenes and some gameplay segments, especially in the beginning, sound cues or sounds in general were fragmented. As Alone and Low are traveling via a carnival ride, the sounds kept disappearing, which was disappointing as the audio during later gameplay segments was so crisp. This is absolutely a game you want to have your headset to play. Also, if you are playing online, you will need a headset anyway so you can talk to your partner via voice chat. Keith and I used Discord since there was no voice chat in the actual game.

Little Nightmares 3 | The Verdict

Little Nightmares III is a great addition to the series. Even with the change in development team, the structure of the series shines through in aesthetics and sound design. Some aspects of the game could be more refined or polished, but overall, I think it is a solid time to play with a friend. There is no local co-op, but online play was pretty solid when Steam’s servers decided they were at least. We had a few random bouts of Steam kicking us off entirely with no warning, and it messed with our momentum on the first day we tried the game.

Little Nightmares III releases on October 10, 2025, for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, Nintendo Switch/Switch 2, and PC (Steam). You can play the demo right now on all platforms.

Review Disclosure Statement: Little Nightmares III was provided to us by Bandai Namco for review purposes. For more information on how we review video games and other media/technology, please review our Review Guideline/Scoring Policy.

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