LITTLE NIGHTMARES III

The smallest of horrors gets the Supermassive treatment

Even by Little Nightmares standards, this feels like a slow buildup. We start by trekking across a desert, two children chafed by blowing sands, signs of some kind of wreckage, or perhaps an exodus, strewn over the brown expanse. Suitcases make up most of the debris, piled up or flung open, except for a single bloated body, face down, slow-cooking in the dull sun. A stone wall signals the end of the walk, and we enter a ruin, yanking a crate of unidentified offal around to unblock a path forward. Beyond lies a dead city, scattered with expired people and clattering mechanisms pulleys and boxes in the foreground, giant wheels turning out of shot, shaking the structure. We're grateful that everything bar the loitering crows here is deceased, especially when we step across the cadavers of some giant beetles.

It's a drip feed of an opening that luxuriates in incidental detail, demanding that you drink it all in when there's little to do but push on from left to right. Yet if this extraslow burn is set to be a signature feature for the series after its switch of developer (from creator Tarsier Studios to British horror maestro Supermassive Games), it's far from a major departure. In part that's because there is continuity from publisher Bandai Namco, the game's key producers having worked on the previous games. But also, there's a concerted effort here to recreate Tarsier's dank atmosphere. "The main [concept] is childhood fears and the way you feel very small in a world that's not made for you," producer Coralie Feniello explains.