so many bugs that any helldiver would be jealous. co-op was fun though

First off, I really truly want to give this game a thumbs up. But I can't.

Pros:
- What story is there is somewhat interesting and sort of engaging.
- Chase sequences were thrilling and made me laugh at some parts.
- The AI isn't the worst I've ever seen. (I died more than it).
- Good character design, except for the final boss. Felt like a random body horror tag just slapped onto the design and that was it.

Cons:

- Biggest one, the story feels VASTLY incomplete. With only four chapter in the base game, the rest of the story is locked behind either the future DLC or the podcasts and media outside of the game.

- If you've seen the trailer, you've seen nearly 3/4th of the game.

- Most of the game is a garbled mess lore wise and fully relies on the player to piece something together, even if it's wrong. Those who haven't listened to the podcasts for example, won't know some lore behind one of the bosses. This lore is never mentioned in game as far as I'm aware.

- Feels like the game was chopped into pieces to make a DLC, especially with the ending.

- Most of the game mechanics beside the bow and wrench felt like weird one off gimmicks. The only one that felt good to me was the umbrella in the first chapter and you had it for a grand total of about 20 minutes.

- The soundtrack didn't feel like it had any big moments, at least not that I noticed (could be wrong), a bland track that if I wasn't paying attention to it wouldn't have even registered.

- The ambiance was kind of a let down.

- The graphics feel like they took a step back from the first two games. In 1 and 2 we had a central location to explore, one that forced an approach of quality over quantity. The locations shown here felt like cardboard cutouts of a "spooky" setting.

- Why are there already so many DLC's for skins? It's a story game, people came for lore content, horror, and to be immersed in the world of borderline eldritch adults. You want skins, fine, make people earn them in game or offer one big pack.



Perhaps people might say it's unfair to compare the qualities of this game to it's predecessors, especially given the change of studios. To this I say, if you're going to take a beloved IP like Little Nightmares and give it the Overwatch or Marvel Treatment, don't make any more. We don't want to be milked for our money, we don't want to have to go trawling through distant media for the full story, and if you're not willing to put some cohesive effort in like Tarsier Studios did, then just stop.

Save your money, wait for Reanimal. Hopefully it pulls through where Supermassive Games has failed.

Fun, but entirely too short for the price point. Then the audacity to charge for 2 extra chapters as an expansion pack that won't finish until almost a year from now? Diabolical. 5 hours of gameplay is not worth 40 dollars.

Here is an honest review from the perspective of someone who really enjoyed the first two. Well, the first one and then MOST of the second one.

I played the entire game with a friend and let's just start with the positives.

1. The game is very pretty. Art style is dead on from the last ones and they definitely managed to continue that same dark gritty fairytale esque setting.

That's unfortunately kind of it for me in the positives. I honestly think that the dev team should have just let this franchise go and not attempted to resurrect it with a new team and the same IP. It's obvious playing through the game that there was none of the engagement or the depth that LN1 or LN2 had.

Here is the specifics:

Coop is honestly used really lightly here. This isn't really a coop game. This is a "you need two bodies to open doors" game. There are only maybe three times during the whole game that actually had a puzzle where people needed to either separate to complete a puzzle or actually interact in unique ways giving each player an important task to solving something.

The game's biggest flaw though is just that it's extremely boring. Even though the game took us about 6 hours to play, almost 4 of those hours felt like we were just either moving through a transitional room (meaning a room that may have some set pieces in them but doesn't actually do anything for the player, like a hallway that maybe has a light in it and a desk, but there is nothing you need to do in said room) or moving through a tiny hallway crouched in order to get to another room or just to get to another door that just requires both players to open. We did run into bugs and some of the objectives were just insanely unclear on what to do to progress and those were frustrating, but truly the most frustrating thing was just not being able to have any mechanics in the game that were engaging in any meaningful way.

Also, there is no reason to collect any of the secret little dolls as they don't unlock any costumes and the costumes they do have are paid DLC (WHICH IS INSANE BTW FOR A GAME THAT COSTS 40$ AND IS HONESTLY JUST A DOOR SIMULATOR).

It's just a bundle of issues that come together to make a once 10/10 series a 4/10 at BEST, and a 2/10 at WORST. There is also an end game boss chase sequence that was bugged for us and many players where if you don't crouch ????? while you break into a new room after a chase that the game will just kill your player. It's apparently a moderately well known bug. How this made it into the game is beyond me.

Lastly, and this is a point in the game's favor, the absolutely END of the game story... like I am talking the last 30 seconds of story that the game actually had before you go back to main menu.... it was really good. The game had a really questionable hogdepodge of a story throughout the game and you were just kind of guessing as to what was happening, but then the game hits you directly in the feelings and gives you an incredibly sad moment that kind of came out of nowhere. My only question is like, where was this storytelling and engagement the rest of the game???

tl;dr - Game is just incredibly boring. Play Reanimal instead as that 25 minute demo has more gameplay than the entirety of LN3.

‎

If you are a fan of Little Nightmares 1 & 2, then I wouldn't recommend this game. The new developers completely missed the mark for what made Little Nightmares a good game.

FIRST OFF! AND I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH! THIS GAME IS NOT WORTH THE 40$, GET IT ON SALE! ALL OF THE COSMETICS ARE LOCKED BEHIND PAID DLC AND THE SECRETS GIVE YOU NOTHING!

With as little spoilers as possible. This game is a Spooky nothing burger. The art style mimics the first, and that is about the only thing that they got right. The puzzles are for babies, taking no mental capacity to solve them at all, and the entire game feels like a walking simulator going left to right, with no mix up to the experience. Instead of coming up with original ides, most of the big spooky moments are pulled directly from 1 & 2 and just spiffed up with a new coat of paint. There were literally rooms that were exactly the same from the first one, but with just different visuals.

Lastly, where the first games excelled at environmental story telling and giving you a world to try and piece together as you solved it, this game just feels like they through things at the wall in whatever order and thought 'YEP THAT SURE IS SPOOKY!' Nothing melded together, nothing made sense, and the controls felt like they were somehow worse. Me and a friend did the whole thing through and by the end, we just wanted it to be over, because there was nothing engaging. Nothing to make you stop and go 'Hmm... What is this?'

If you really want to play it, wait for a HEAVY discount, because this game feels like a cash grab.

underwhelming, repetitive and boring for a huge price. Clearly visible that the game was not made by the same studio that made amazing Little Nightmares I and II. Not worth your time.

This game borrows the name and a faint whiff of its predecessors, riding their success rather than earning success of its own. I can see it straining to imitate what came before, but it never really convinces me that it's worth playing. In Little Nightmares III, the nightmares are mostly missing. The only one that remains is the gap between what the title promises and what I actually get.

If you are a fan of Little Nightmares 1 & 2, then I wouldn't recommend this game. The new developers completely missed the mark for what made Little Nightmares a good game.
FIRST OFF! AND I CAN'T STRESS THIS ENOUGH! THIS GAME IS NOT WORTH THE 40$, GET IT ON SALE! ALL OF THE COSMETICS ARE LOCKED BEHIND PAID DLC AND THE SECRETS GIVE YOU NOTHING!
With as little spoilers as possible. This game is a Spooky nothing burger. The art style mimics the first, and that is about the only thing that they got right. The puzzles are for babies, taking no mental capacity to solve them at all, and the entire game feels like a walking simulator going left to right, with no mix up to the experience. Instead of coming up with original ideas, most of the big spooky moments are pulled directly from 1 & 2 and just spiffed up with a new coat of paint. There were literally rooms that were exactly the same from the first one, but with just different visuals.
Lastly, where the first games excelled at environmental story telling and giving you a world to try and piece together as you solved it, this game just feels like they threw things at the wall in whatever order and thought 'YEP THAT SURE IS SPOOKY!' Nothing melded together, nothing made sense, and the controls felt like they were somehow worse. Me and a friend did the whole thing through and by the end, we just wanted it to be over, because there was nothing engaging. Nothing to make you stop and go 'Hmm... What is this?'
If you really want to play it, wait for a HEAVY discount, because this game feels like a cash grab.
I am so beyond heartbroken with this game. I have never left a steam review but i had to for this game. I have waited like 5 years for this to release only to be kicked in the face repeatedly. The story is bad, nothing about the environments or enemies was really ever explained, it was extremely buggy at points, characters getting stuck or losing items to the point we had too reset from checkpoints or kill ourselves. the ending is terrible and answers a question nobody was asking. The only thing remotely tied to the first two games doesnt build upon their story at all. Its a ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ What was the point of the entire game? what did we learn or accomplish? i dont even know what to say im so sad right now i could cry cause i cared so much about this series and immedietly spent 85 dollars on it so i could play with my friend and now i feel cheated.
Edits: I am aware of the fact there is a friend pass so i did not need to purchase the game twice, i purchased it twice before it released so my friend could also have access to little nightmares 1 and so she could replay the game with anyone else at any point.
I was so excited for this game, so unbelievably excited and i wanted it to be good so badly but it just wasnt. In the first two games all the enemies were connected, they had a reason to be there and were related to the "big bad" the environments also showed this. This game feels so lackluster in comparison. None of the enemies have a reason to be there or real functions inside the story. It seems like there was going to be more lore at some point in the game, me and my friend noticed a poster in the background about Maybe this could have given us more idea about the world we were in but nothing else like that ever came up. none of it matters because What was the point of anything we did? even if it were explained and the world was built upon it doesnt matter.
the character you choose doesnt matter at all other than aesthetics really, which is an insane missed opportunity for replayability. It felt like the game was scared to have one player experience something and not the other. Whenever you have one character go someplace to make an opening for the other player it never mattered who went where. and both characters had the exact same experience during gameplay. The one and only time i think it mattered was at the very end where low needs to hold a door open so alone could walk to the other side and break a wall for low to follow .(FIVE HOURS INTO THE GAME BTW,) I was waiting the whole game for us having to split up at somepoint and accomplish something for a greater progression forward together but it never happened.
First off, I really truly want to give this game a thumbs up. But I can't.
Pros:

What story is there is somewhat interesting and sort of engaging.
Chase sequences were thrilling and made me laugh at some parts.
The AI isn't the worst I've ever seen. (I died more than it).
Good character design, except for the final boss. Felt like a random body horror tag just slapped onto the design and that was it.

Cons:

Biggest one, the story feels VASTLY incomplete. With only four chapter in the base game, the rest of the story is locked behind either the future DLC or the podcasts and media outside of the game.
If you've seen the trailer, you've seen nearly 3/4th of the game.
Most of the game is a garbled mess lore wise and fully relies on the player to piece something together, even if it's wrong. Those who haven't listened to the podcasts for example, won't know some lore behind one of the bosses. This lore is never mentioned in game as far as I'm aware.
Feels like the game was chopped into pieces to make a DLC, especially with the ending.
Most of the game mechanics beside the bow and wrench felt like weird one off gimmicks. The only one that felt good to me was the umbrella in the first chapter and you had it for a grand total of about 20 minutes.
The soundtrack didn't feel like it had any big moments, at least not that I noticed (could be wrong), a bland track that if I wasn't paying attention to it wouldn't have even registered.
The ambiance was kind of a let down.
The graphics feel like they took a step back from the first two games. In 1 and 2 we had a central location to explore, one that forced an approach of quality over quantity. The locations shown here felt like cardboard cutouts of a "spooky" setting.
Why are there already so many DLC's for skins? It's a story game, people came for lore content, horror, and to be immersed in the world of borderline eldritch adults. You want skins, fine, make people earn them in game or offer one big pack.

Perhaps people might say it's unfair to compare the qualities of this game to it's predecessors, especially given the change of studios. To this I say, if you're going to take a beloved IP like Little Nightmares and give it the Overwatch or Marvel Treatment, don't make any more. We don't want to be milked for our money, we don't want to have to go trawling through distant media for the full story, and if you're not willing to put some cohesive effort in like Tarsier Studios did, then just stop.
Save your money, wait for Reanimal. Hopefully it pulls through where Supermassive Games has failed.

I absolutely adored the past two games, so much so that I made it my personality for several years. I KNOW how exited the devs were to release this project, and I was exited to play it. Unfortunately it pains my heart to give it a negative review.

The game feels like they were trying too hard to capture the magic of the first two without thinking about what made them good, but at the same time it feels like it's trying to be something entirely different. The combination of these two somehow creates a forgettable and utterly confusing experience.

>Old content nostalgia: Like I said, the game tried incredibly hard to capture the same style as the other two and they succeeded somewhat... by copying older games almost exactly. Many of the mechanics are incredibly similar and don't feel unique like they did in their original games. For example, Mono's ability to go through TVs was incredible at the time, it was something new and unexpected... and this game gave the same ability to Low, but with mirrors. There was no buildup to this moment whatsoever and it feels very disconnected to what else is going on in the game. On top of that, they are used to teleport you to the next level instead of the other two's natural progression through the world. This makes it feel like I'm playing mostly disjointed and completely unconnected levels without any sense where I am. The puzzles are not challenging at all either, in fact they seem to be completely reusing puzzle and room designs. To again use an example, the room at the top of the elevator in the candy factory looks shockingly similar to the hospital two fuse puzzle in LN2. Not only that but the room directly to the left is the EXACT same puzzle from the kitchens in the original game, asking the player to climb a stack of plates/trays and grab on to meat hooks that carry you to the next room. (side note the depth perception is horrendous and I was unable to line up my jumps to grab on) To make matters worse, when new mechanics are given, they are just as quickly taken away. (think of the umbrella from the first level) The bosses aren't all that unique either, I truly understand why Monster Baby was at the center of all the marketing because she's really the only memorable character (that had a fumbled bossfight) I was most exited to see the ringmaster of the carnival level personally, I was hoping for some circus-y theme or something unique that really lends itself to the atmosphere... instead I got a design that looked like it would be a background painting that is barely visible on the maw. Same as with the candy factory lady, I was able to figure out exactly what her gimmick was after two or three trailers, truly nothing seemed new or particularly eye-catching. Maybe the underwhelming designs could've been saved by more encounters and fun gameplay but that is seemingly not the case.

>New content: The new team at supermassive games started building on the world almost immediately after receiving the IP. Starting mainly with the Sounds of Nightmares podcast. I personally never listened to it as podcasts aren't really my thing, but I know it was received well. The issue came when all of this side content became CRUCIAL to understanding the lore of the game. If you haven't listened to the podcast the game itself makes absolutely zero sense. I know the new team was trying to make new and more alluring lore but in all honesty it kind of throws my perception of the games out of whack. Aside from the retconned comics from the first game, the games themselves make no reference or mention to the outside world, as it isn't necessary to the plot and clutters up the storytelling, but with the new content we have been receiving seems to leave that bubble and kills the mystery and strange solitude of the LN world. This was really impressioned on me with the reveal of the new graphic novels and books, one of which features an adult character travelling into the newly named "Nowhere" to find the missing children. On that same line I have noticed another drastic change that rubs me the wrong way personally and that is monetized storytelling. Before you could play the game and get a basic idea of the plot, maybe look a little deeper into the symbolism or find someone to explain it for you, but it was accessible. Now it seems like most of the important plot points are behind a paywall. To fully understand the game now you have to read the book series (multiple) and have the lore spoon fed to you. Ofc there is also the podcast, and animated shorts that you have to wait for, keeping much of the game's story still inaccessible. This new area (called the spiral I believe?) feels entirely disconnected from the other two games as well, I fully understand the desire to make something new, but it doesn't add to the pre-established story at all, with even the levels and areas (candy factory / gallery especially) feeling like cheap ripoffs of areas we've already seen.

>Other small issues: The game is short. Really short. An entire chapter shorter than the other two games, and with the very small level design and easy repeated puzzles, does not offer a playtime worthy of the $40 price tag, much less the $60 that I spent for the deluxe edition that essentially only included costumes that were references to the past games (nostalgia again) and "extra levels" which were not disclosed to be unreleased DLC from the beginning. I wont even get into the sheer amount of versions this game has and the absurd price tags attached, much less the piles and piles of merch that went on sale (some for a limited time only) before the game even had a release date. Online play is also very buggy. If you all remember the collapsing hallway in the first area, I was playing with my friend and I died I believe four or five times for seemingly no reason. I would run out of the exit door on the opposite end and then just drop dead in the next room. Repeatedly. There were a multitude of smaller less problematic bugs as well, like glitching mid-jump and being sent back to where I jumped from and immediately falling to my death, or my friend's umbrella that repeatedly displayed as sticking out from their back.

I'm sure I will think of more grievances that I have forgotten to include here, but overall I am extremely disappointed and saddened by the direction this franchise seems to be going in. If you haven't played yet and are a fan of the other games; don't bother buying this one, it will just disappoint you as well. And if you are a new fan who are considering playing; I would STRONGLY recommend going back and playing the other two. It will cost you less and give you a much more engaging and creepy experience. Personally I had more fun theorizing about the trailers than playing the actual game.