REANIMAL is the next game from Tarsier Studios, the developers of the first two Little Nightmares games. In 2019, Tarsier Studios was acquired by Embracer Group, but the Little Nightmares IP stayed with Bandai Namco. Little Nightmares III went on to be developed by Supermassive Games, and Tarsier moved on to REANIMAL.
With that context out of the way, REANIMAL is immediately recognisable as Tarsier’s work in everything but name. It is a co-op horror platformer that sees a nameless brother and sister traverse a hellish landscape full of vicious seagulls, distorted giants, demonic sheep, and much more.
While REANIMAL’s narrative remains as minimalist as Tarsier Studio’s other games, there is more to chew on here than ever before. For starters, the brother and sister and their rescued companions share a few lines of dialogue at key moments. Even just having a clear goal of saving your friends and escaping together is more of a mission objective than Little Nightmares I or II. This framework makes it easier than ever to care about these poor kids’ every triumph and failure.
While the bones of this game are familiar, REANIMAL evolves and expands the formula in numerous ways. The level design is far more complicated, featuring three-dimensional environments and branching paths. Little Nightmares has moments where you can move toward the camera or into the background, but here the camera will follow you as you weave through abandoned streets, duck into an explorable abandoned cinema, flee out the other side into an alley, only to eventually loop back around to the same streets you started in.
Stealth is still present, but it’s far less frequent than in the Little Nightmares games. Instead, REANIMAL offers a consistently surprising variety of gameplay scenarios right up until the credits. Many of these are best experienced for yourself, so I won’t get into any details here, but rest assured this game is a rollercoaster.
The brother and sister pilot a small boat through this oppressive world, where one of you will need to throw harpoons to detonate mines and dispatch other more frightening and less stationary obstacles. A few of these sections take a wide-linear approach; there may only be one path that progresses the story, but there will be a number of points of interest to explore and secrets to find.
Bridging all of these environments together are stunning vistas, terrifying chase sequences, and even a few boss fights. Moving through a huge wheatfield with a decrepit barn in the distance, guiding your tiny boat towards a gargantuan battleship, and facing off against the repulsive, often enormous, monster that has been harrying you for the last 30 minutes—all of it is mesmerising and thrilling.
Ultimately, REANIMAL succeeds completely at being a spiritual successor to the Little Nightmares series, but in truth it is so much more. This game is haunting, disturbing, emotional, and beautiful, all in equal measure. The art design, visual fidelity, music, and sound design fire on all cylinders from start to finish. This is a relatively short game, taking probably 6-8 hours to complete, but it rarely lets up.
Whether you’re white-knuckle gripping your controller and gritting your teeth as some unknowable beast comes tearing towards you or simply absorbing the gorgeous melancholy of this world, REANIMAL never stops delighting your eyes and ears.
Rating: 9/10
REANIMAL was reviewed on PS5 with a code provided by the publisher.