Little Nightmares 3 review: "An overly safe, uneven, and half-baked follow-up where co-op is a hindrance instead of the evolution it should've been"

Digital storefront key art for Little Nightmares 3 showing the two masked kids holding hands among a clutter of household items as a large figure with a glowing eye menacingly watches them from the background, cropped closer to the highlight the children.

When it was announced that Supermassive Games was stepping in for Tarsier Studios to make Little Nightmares 3, I was conflicted. On one hand, Supermassive made Until Dawn, one of my favorite horror games ever. On the other, that's a high bar to clear, and this horror platformer is a different kind of beast entirely. Sadly, Little Nightmares 3 not only fails to reach the highs of Until Dawn – it falls short of its predecessors, too, carrying over wrinkles I was hoping to see ironed out and underutilizing new features that could've otherwise taken the series into exciting new directions.

Little Nightmares has always been a series that makes up for its clunky controls and shallow gameplay with meticulously crafted vibes: the imposing sense of scale, the wonderfully macabre creatures, and the delicately conveyed lore behind it all. This series is perfect for October, and whether I'm compelled by jumping from platform to platform in-between chase sequences and tedious puzzles doesn't matter. I play these games for the vibes. But with Little Nightmares 3, I was hoping innovations like co-op, a gliding umbrella, and bow-and-arrow would give me something more than just vibes to huff on, but after rolling credits, I'm not sure it even gave me that.