Luigi's Mansion 3 is an action-adventure game, in which players control the character of Luigi from a fixed third-person perspective, as they capture ghosts across a large hotel setting. The game features two modes of gameplay – a single-player story mode, and a set of multiplayer game modes – in which ghost catching functions in the same manner as previous installments: players stun ghosts with Luigi's Strobulb, snag them with his Poltergust, and weaken their health down to 0 in order to capture them.
Single-player[edit]
In the single-player story mode, players explore a large hotel with 17 floors – each floor consists of a different theme and atmosphere, and a variety of ghosts, including a boss ghost that the player must defeat. Some of the first floors, such as Floor 2, do not have a theme. Unlike the story mode of Luigi's Mansion: Dark Moon, which focused on pre-defined mission structure of gameplay across several mansions, Luigi's Mansion 3 is more open-ended allowing for greater exploration of the game's setting, with the only restriction being that players cannot explore floors in the hotel via the elevator until they have found the button that allows access to it; the hotel's main lobby and basement are the only floors to have a staircase between them that circumvents the need for the elevator.
Treasure can be found during exploration of the hotel's floor from various objects and solving some puzzles. Luigi can find coins (worth 1), banknotes (worth 50) and gold bars, (worth 100), as well as bags of money containing many hundreds of coins. He can also find special gems on each floor, alongside the capture of Boos, a regular enemy in the Mario series, while Luigi can find hearts to recover health lost from the attacks of ghosts and other environmental hazards. Some of the features introduced by Dark Moon are available in the game, including a stun charge function that can make ghost catching easier, and the Dark-Light Device, a blacklight function that can reveal objects that have become invisible (after capturing Spirit Balls, which cause the invisibility) and animate certain portraits. It can also bring possessed items, such as possessed chests or rubbish bins, back to normal. New to the series include new functions to the Poltergust – an area burst attack that can help keep multiple enemies back, as well as blow away furniture to reveal treasure; a suction cup attachment, which allows the player to fire a plunger onto obstacles and then remove them by using the Poltergust on the cup's cord; and a slam attack, which allow players to repeatedly smash ghosts they are capturing to the ground, both for greater damage as well as a weapon to hit other ghosts around them.
The most notable addition to the game is Gooigi – an ectoplasmic doppelgänger of Luigi previously introduced in the 3DS remake of the original Luigi's Mansion. Gooigi can conduct similar moves to those of his real counterpart, and can be controlled by the player (switching between Luigi and Gooigi) or a second player in local co-op. Gooigi can be used by the player to help in battles and with solving some of the game's puzzles, some of which require the use of Gooigi and Luigi to complete. Unlike Luigi, Gooigi can squeeze through gaps in vents and grills, and walk across spiked floors, but is weaker than his real counterpart and will instantly lose his physical form if he comes into contact with water or fire.
Multiplayer[edit]
The game's multiplayer mode allows for up to eight players to play together locally and online. In this mode, players can engage in cooperative gameplay through "ScareScraper", a returning feature from Dark Moon, or competitive team matches in "ScreamPark". Both modes use the same style of controls in the single-player mode, with players able to control four colour variations (green, purple, orange, or blue) of Luigi or Gooigi. ScareScraper focuses on cooperative team work between players to clear out each of the 5 or 10 floors of a randomly generated high-rise building by seeking out the ghosts hiding on each floor. "ScreamPark" focuses on team-based matches - one side as Team Luigi, the other as Team Gooigi - and scoring points in three different match types: Ghost Hunt, in which teams score points by catching ghosts, with tougher ghosts worth more points; Cannon Barrage, in which teams score points by securing cannonballs, some held by ghosts, loading them into a cannon and firing them at targets, with trickier targets scoring more points; and Coin Floating, in which teams use floats to collect coins that drop in a pool, avoiding mines that are dropped as well or face losing the coins in their possession and allowing their opponents to steal them.
