There’s a very specific moment in Little Nightmares III that encapsulates the game so perfectly that it sticks with me long after I’ve finished my hands-on. Bandai Namco’s demo, ahead of the game’s PS5 and PS4 release on October 10, knew exactly what it was doing.
Picture the scene: I’ve assumed the pigtailed Alone, partner to the raven-masked Low, who is controlled by Bandai Namco’s Global Project Manager Lina Chaghouri. About 40 minutes in, we’re trapped in a shadow-soaked room containing an eerily unmoving man lying in a magician’s box – the type that typically has the magician sawn in half but still miraculously remains whole at the end of the performance. Our only way out? Via an exit too high to reach.
After a minute, I realise that the body’s exposed feet act as a handle. Grim. So I guide Alone over to it and pull. With Lina’s help, the box eventually splits into two, but so does the man. His entrails messily leak out as we guide the box to the end of the room so we can escape. It’s macabre, darkly humorous, and demonstrates the essential co-operation that makes Little Nightmares III so wonderfully compelling.
Expanding from Little Nightmares II
It also happens to be a favourite moment of Coralie Feniello, Bandai Namco’s Global Producer on the game. “In concept, it’s quite simple – pulling, pushing, picking up stuff are all tactile actions that make you feel like a child in that world. And this one is just pulling two boxes, but the setup and the setting of the place makes it memorable. I love having the player do something which is kind of immoral, but it’s the only way for them to get out of a situation.”
Fans of the popular horror puzzle platformer series will find these sorts of gruesome scenarios familiar. But what separates Little Nightmares III – thankfully without the entrails – from its siblings is the game’s focus on co-op play. While Little Nightmares II eventually allowed you to journey with an AI companion, its sequel not only has this feature from the start but also lets a second player control either Low or Alone, as a fully-fledged two-player game.
“We learned things from Little Nightmares II and did a lot of playtests,” reveals Coralie. “We basically had to design the game three times, including adding things like cute flavour animations that are specific to single player. We started by designing the multiplayer first, because we wanted to make sure that the AI would behave like a human player. And through every playtest we’ve done, we’ve been checking the player’s enjoyment.”
Balancing horror with a friend
Chances are, another frightening thought might now be creeping into your head – does the addition of human co-op diminish the scares? “Maintaining horror during co-op can be complicated and was something we thought about a lot at the beginning of development,” says Coralie. “Supermassive Games has been doing multiplayer on the Dark Pictures Anthology for years now, and so it was good for us to work with them on that aspect.
“From early playtests, we found that it was fine, and actually created a different type of atmosphere. Sometimes you’ll have players who will get scared because the other player is scared, out of empathy. You’ll also share laughs and experience a wider range of emotions, but I don’t think it’s breaking the scariness.”
Hello! I’m Blake from the Ironwood Studios team and we’re proud to introduce Whispers in the Woods, a major narrative and gameplay expansion to Pacific Drive.
When Pacific Drive first launched in February 2024, players joined their trusty station wagon to brave the haunting, anomaly-filled Olympic Exclusion Zone. The game’s unique blend of driving, tense exploration, and scrappy car maintenance quickly resonated with fans of car and survival games alike. Now, we are excited to bring players back to the driver’s seat and back to the Zone in Whispers in the Woods, coming later this year for Playstation 5.
