The trailer for Little Nightmares 3 has just been released, along with a video by SuperHorrorBro which discusses their own exclusive look at the game.  For more details, you’ll need to watch SuperHorrorBro’s full video (lower down in this post), but I’d like to use this post as a chance to talk a little bit about my thoughts on the trailer and some of this new information that I’ve learned.

The trailer shows two new characters (named Low and Alone) travelling through abandoned ruins in the desert called the Necropolis.  During the trailer, we catch glimpses of large, hulking people (perhaps similar to the Guests from the first game?), something lurking in a pipe, and a huge baby-like creature that is easily the largest monster we have yet to see in the franchise (well, unless you include the giant fleshy mass of eyes present in the ending of Little Nightmares 2).

One of my biggest concerns is the fact that this game is being created by a new developer.  While the first two games were created by Tarsier Studios, this new one is being developed by Supermassive Games, who are known for horror games such as Until Dawn, The Dark Pictures Anthology, and The Quarry.  Seeing as I’m unfamiliar with all of the games listed, I can’t comment on the quality of Supermassive’s games, though I am at least glad that they have experience in the horror genre and also worked on the Enhanced Edition of Little Nightmares 2.  Nevertheless, whenever a franchise is handed over to new creators, there is a risk that what originally made the series so good can be lost, and I hope that Supermassive has a clear understanding of Little Nightmares’ creepy atmosphere, freakish monsters, and its intriguing lore, which is usually rather vague and left open to interpretation.

Lastly, I wanted to briefly touch on the new characters and the gameplay.  I’ll admit that the first thing I noticed when watching the trailer is that I’m not really a fan of the character design for our two new protagonists.  The first two games featured pretty simple characters, with Six sporting her iconic yellow raincoat and Mono wearing his coat and obscuring his features with a paper bag over his head.  From the comments I’ve seen online, I’m not the only person who thought that their designs were just a bit too busy.  For me, however, the character design for the monsters is going to be far more important, so I’m really hoping Supermassive can pull that off, as Little Nightmares has always had some of my favorite monster designs, which manage to be chilling without being gory.

From what little I know of the gameplay so far, it looks like we’ll still be solving puzzles, as is the custom in the series.  Low and Alone also have tattered, little umbrellas that they can use to ride on updrafts.  Something that was not apparent in the trailer that I learned from SuperHorrorBro’s video was that both of the main characters have unique weapons, with Alone toting a wrench for close combat, while Low comes equipped with a bow for long-range.  Little Nightmares has always been more about stealth rather than combat, and the small amount of fighting present in the second game could be rather frustrating.  I’m just hoping that fighting enemies doesn’t become too much of a focus in this game.

With that said, I’m still approaching Little Nightmares 3 with an open mind.  So far, we’ve seen too little of the game to come to any solid conclusions yet.  I’m still quite excited to return to the world of Little Nightmares (there’s even going to be a carnival level this time!), and having two characters (for solo or co-op) with different abilities could lead to some interesting gameplay and puzzle-solving.  Hopefully the AI-controlled character will be just as competent as Six was in Little Nightmares 2.  Right now, the game is scheduled to be released sometime in 2024, and I’ve read that it should be available on all major consoles and PC, including last-gen consoles such as PS4 and XBox One.