Conventional wisdom dictates that having a companion by your side makes handling a stressful situation easier. But after a 30-minute demo with Little Nightmares 3, it seems conventional wisdom doesn’t apply to The Maw, the macabre setting of all Little Nightmares games. Little Nightmares 3, scheduled for release in 2025, will bring players to never-before-seen areas of The Maw, some of which I got to see for myself in a recent hands-on demo.The big headline for this horror sequel is the addition of two-player co-op, and as a horror fan, I was happy to learn your co-dependent relationship may amplify the scare factor. In my demo, I played through a level set in The Maw’s “candy factory,” featuring sweets that make gelatin seem as appetizing as a Wonka confection. Assembly lines of dead or dying bodies creaked slowly through the shadows in the background of the oppressive workspace as my co-op partner and I controlled the game’s new dual protagonists, Alone and Low.
One is equipped with a heavy wrench, which can be used to solve puzzles that require a melee whack, like hitting a button too big for the minuscule characters to affect by jumping on it. The other holds a bow and arrow, used for other puzzles in which something is out of reach, like a switch hanging above an electrified puddle. Because each of these characters has a unique skill that the other will frequently need, the game’s design philosophy is clear and enticing: Rely on each other… or die.That’s a delicate balance to pull off, of course. Nobody likes a janky escort mission in single-player games because the AI companion can so often let them down. Surely an unreliable co-op partner can bring about the same feelings, like a sous chef in Overcooked who isn’t preparing the damn onions when they should be. But what is horror, if not extreme stress? I suspect Little Nightmares 3 may actually be the right setting for this sort of tandem puzzle-solving, even more than games like It Takes Two or A Way Out, which expect their players to create a similar level of cohesion.In past Little Nightmares games, there’s always been a few flavors to the puzzles. Sometimes, you’ll have all the time you need to work out a solution, and there’s a limited penalty for failing–perhaps you’ll take fatal fall damage or zap yourself in an aforementioned puddle, but the incredibly creepy enemies, thankfully, aren’t around. In Little Nightmare 3’s co-op, this makes for fun brainstorms where the players collaborate to progress.Then there are puzzles in which failure means alerting an enemy, and these are surely scarier. It may be a noise you make, or your failure to move from shadow to shadow before the monster looks your way. These are more stressful because they tend to end in death animations where your character is coldly disposed of or eaten. It’s jarring, but still manageable for many players who have played these games, even if now it may be your co-op partner selling you out, like I often did for my co-op partner, someone from the Little Nightmares 3 team who knew all the answers and let me fail to keep my experience pure.But then there are those sections where, as soon as you begin on a new screen in the 2.5D platformer, you’re being chased, and you have to intuitively find and use the escape route right then and there. Sometimes, as little as one wrong step can get you caught. In past Little Nightmares games, repeatedly failing these moments had the effect of a recurring bad dream. Now, in co-op for the first time, these will create new situations in which one player may have made it out, but the other didn’t, causing them both to restart the heart-pounding sequence over again.
Like I said, this could become a point of frustration over the course of the full game. Relying on someone other than yourself in such a stressful situation is a tall order. For some, that loss of autonomy is more stressful and thus scarier than being alone in the same situation. Little Nightmares 3 plays with these interpersonal dynamics with puzzle designs that will feel familiar in a world that is anything but. But from what I saw, the characters are presented in a way that quickly elicits empathy.They are, after all, the only good-natured beings in The Maw, so as much as your co-op partner might regrettably drag you back to hell when you thought you’d escaped it, I expect–and based on my playthrough so far, have found–it’s more likely you’ll feel for them and want to be there to save them from the clutches of the truly horrifying ghouls that inhabit The Maw.I’ve enjoyed both Little Nightmares games to date, and so far, this new one feels like a worthy and unsettling successor, even as development has shifted from the Swedish Tarsier Studios to the UK’s Supermassive Games. I’ve wondered if co-op or a change of studio would mean any obvious loss in the game’s merits, but my concerns have been squashed. I’m excited to jump into the game next year with my co-op partner, my easily scared wife, and see if we can stay on the right side of execution and executed.Though it has no specific release date besides 2025, you can already preorder Little Nightmares 3.