Little Nightmares 3 hands-on: I got chased by a giant baby

Honestly this baby is absolutely massive

Little Nightmares 3 / Bandai Namco

You are not prepared for Little Nightmares 3. That is, unless you’re prepared to be chased by a giant baby. And even then, you’re still not fully prepared, because the baby can also turn you into a statue. 

That’s the ongoing threat presiding over my demo, the world’s first hands-on for Bandai Namco’s new horror platformer. With series developer Tarsier joining THQ Nordic for similarly creepy co-op platformer Reanimal, this time Supermassive Games is on development duties.

The studio behind Until Dawn and the upcoming Directive 8020 has proved more than capable of delivering an unsettling atmosphere or two. Here, I’m exploring a forlorn desert city with creaking windmills and cawing ravens. 

Little Nightmares 3 / Bandai Namco

There’s a deep yellow haze hanging in the air, as if a monumental sandstorm has just blown through. In the distance, deceased figures hang limply on ropes, their silhouettes cutting through the hue. On the ground lay rotting crow carcasses, their blood, and bones baking in the sun. 

You start by selecting your character from two choices: Low or Alone. One has a green hazmat suit, the other a bird mask. They look like a chibi Slipknot.

Each has a distinct skill. Alone uses a wrench to smash through weakened rubble, as well as crank wheels to open new routes. Low, meanwhile, can shoot hanging objects with their bow. 

Little Nightmares 3 / Bandai Namco

For the first time in the series, you can play in online co-op. If you’re playing in single-player, the AI will use its special ability automatically when appropriate. 

Later, you’ll unlock an umbrella made from the oily black plumage of a raven, using it to catch updrafts of wind, and glide safely down from perilous heights. 

The puzzles won’t have you scratching your head, at least in this section of the game. You’ll move blocks to climb up scenery, stand on switches to open routes for your partner, and join forces to barge through barred doors. It’s basic stuff. The real creativity comes in the environmental storytelling.

Little Nightmares 3 / Bandai Namco

For instance, you’ll see strange walls of sandbags as you explore, stretching past the upper limits of the screen. ‘What’s with that?’ you’ll wonder. 

All is revealed 15 minutes later when you pass a sandbag that’s been split open to reveal a bunch of black bird feathers. Every sandbag is full of them, thousands upon thousands of feather-stuffed sandbags. It’s avian genocide. 

Little Nightmares 3 excels at slowly dawning realisations. Another example lies in the weird stone statues you’ll see littered about. One is of a man in a chair, another resembles a person hunched over. It turns out these aren’t statues at all. 

Little Nightmares 3 / Bandai Namco

These are humans turned to stone by a giant baby, which makes its dramatic entrance by smashing its great chubby arm through a house and crushing a crow in its grip.

Avoid the Medusa baby’s bright yellow glare by timing your dashes between cover, or else join the townsfolk in a stoney death. 

Little Nightmares 3 doesn’t explain why a baby is chasing you, how you’ve managed to anger it, or what sort of world could sanction such a being to even exist. But that’s precisely why the game works.

Little Nightmares 3 releases in 2025 on PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, PC and Nintendo Switch.