Little Nightmares 3 will not feature couch co-op in order to maintain the game’s atmosphere and immersion dev noted

Bandai Namco has recently unveiled the highly anticipated third installment of the Little Nightmares series, which has been received with great enthusiasm. However, a matter of concern has emerged regarding the absence of a couch co-op mode in the game. The development team has explained that they have opted not to include the local multiplayer mode in order to maintain the game’s “atmosphere and immersion”. Despite being one of the most requested features by fans of the series, Little Nightmares 3 will only offer online co-op play.

“Little Nightmares is obviously a different type of horror game than the sort of things we traditionally make,” Supermassive’s game director Wayne Garland tells me. “Dark Pictures, The Quarry, Until Dawn, they tend to be explicit horror. It’s all through the characters and how they’re driving the story in a very clear narrative. Little Nightmares 3 is much more implicit in that way. You find a lot of the horror through moving through the environmental setting, the actions of the antagonist, the character’s influence, the sound. And really, that’s what gives you that sense of unease you feel as you traverse the world.”

“Although Supermassive’s past work has featured both local and online co-op modes, the Little Nightmares team has taken this propensity for silliness into account, says Garland. “We’ve been asked questions about online versus couch co-op. Couch is something that we considered, but again, when you come back to the atmosphere and the immersion that we’re trying to elicit through Little Nightmares, I think it was important for us that we stuck to our online co-op only rather than traditional more party aspects.””

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