Despite a change in developer, Little Nightmares 3’s new demo suggests more of the same, for better or worse

Little Nightmares 3 has a demo! And if you were worried a new developer might mean big changes for the well-received horror series, this generous playable jaunt through ancient corners suggests – for better or worse – there’s nothing to fear.

This third macabre tale brings an entirely new crew of adorably creepy moppets to put through the wringer; there’s the bird-masked Low, with his trusty bow and arrow, and the spanner-wielding Alone, hidden behind her helmet and goggles. Solo, you’re free to pick either and the game controls the other. But unlike Little Nightmares 2 – which remained a strictly single-player affair despite introducing dual protagonists – optional co-op is supported, meaning there’s now properly room for two on this grim adventure.

Beyond that, though, Supermassive Games (the studio behind Until Dawn and the Dark Pictures Anthology, here taking over from original developer Tarsier) very much appears to be working to a familiar script. That means pint-sized peril in side-scrolling platform adventure form, where pursuit set-pieces against giant grotesqueries are punctuated by physics-based puzzles.

It’s a perfectly solid formula, but Little Nightmares has always been best defined by its distinctive ambience, where the world and its horrors feel like they’ve slithered straight from a child’s imagination. That, series fans will be relieved to discover, is amply evident in the demo; the intimidatingly cavernous spaces and unfathomable heights of its sand-blasted ancient city backdrop – the Necropolis – immediately make you feel very vulnerable and very, very small. And it’s all brought to life with an instantly recognisable visual identity built around suffocatingly thick particles and extreme contrasts of light and dark. Honestly, if someone hadn’t told me, I don’t think I’d ever have guessed this was the work of a brand-new team.

Unfortunately, the demo suggests that in so closely adhering to a well-established formula, Supermassive has replicated many of the series’ worst habits too. Little Nightmares 1 was already a fussy, fuzzy thing, but it was intriguing enough – and refreshing enough – to carry me through. Second time around and the relentless parade of returning micro-frustrations eventually wore me down, and – if 3’s demo is representative of the full game – many remain.

We’ve got fussy platforming where the ability to move in and out of the screen never quite gels with the side-on camera; already I’ve spent far too much time failing trivial tasks – toppling off beams, overshooting ledges, and misjudging jumps – thanks to perspective obfuscation.

We’ve trial-and-error insta-death sequences paired with checkpoints on the wrong side of a dull busywork; a speed-reliant combat sequence at odds with the ponderous controls, plus poor environmental signposting. Twice in the demo I ground to a halt because the lighting, level design, and camera placement heavily suggested the path forward was into the screen when it was actually the opposite, secreted along a shadowy route entirely off-camera. None of this is particularly new for the series, but that doesn’t make it any less of an irritation.

The hope, then, is that the good stuff will be plentiful enough to offset the familiar frustration, and there’s still promise in the way Supermassive has captured the series’ grimly fascinating spirit. Even the demo – with its scores of shroud-covered corpses and streets of eerily statuesque dead – manages to suggest so much history without ever saying a word. Granted, the giant doll-baby that pursues you throughout is a bit rote compared to some of the series’ best abominations, but I’m willing to give it a pass based on how the demo ends.

And really, there’s still nothing else quite like Little Nightmares (until Tarsier’s similarly styled kids-in-dark-places adventure Reanimal, at least), so I’m unquestionably onboard for more. Little Nightmares 3’s demo is available now on PlayStation, Xbox, Switch, and PC if you want to try it yourself, and the full game arrives on 10th October.