Tarsier Studio’s best-known games are Little Nightmares I and II, while Supermassive Games went on to make Little Nightmares III. Tarsier is back with Reanimal. Has Tarsier Studios been able to move on to bigger nightmares with their latest creepy, atmospheric child endangerment adventure? 

You start alone in a little motorboat. A masked boy on dark and mysterious waters, guided only by the piercing red lights of the buoys. A little further on, and you rescue another person— it’s your sister (also with a mask). Together, you need to brave the dark and twisted world to rescue your friends. If you’ve been following this game or the studio’s other works, then you won’t be surprised to find that the journey is grim, metaphorically and literally dark. The world of Reanimal is filled with deadly humans, slithering skin snake-things, and a few mutated animals as well. Almost everything in the world wants you dead, directly or indirectly. 

As with the previous games in Tarsier’s history, the story is up for interpretation and potentially some lore outside of the game itself. In Reanimal, there is some dialogue, though it’s minimal and is just as ambiguous. At the end of the day, the main things are that you’re going to be running away from and encountering many things that go bump in the night, across a series of dark and creepy locations. It’s what Tarsier is good at, and they deliver.

Promotional material for Reanimal draws on “taking horror to new depths”, which is a bold claim given the nightmarish creations they’ve unleashed on the gaming world so far. To an extent, this is true. There are some very dark moments here, but possibly familiarity has dulled my senses to this form of atmospheric horror. You will see the child characters die. I don’t know if there’s a name to the genre, but “creepy atmospheric child endangerment adventure” is as good a description as any. And please don’t take my emphasis on the characters being put in harm’s way to mean that is the game’s focus. Of course, your goal should be avoiding death. There are enough gross and threatening creatures to run away from or fight. 

I feel that I should raise some of the more intense content in the game, as there’s no warning at the start of the game nor is it present in the game ratings (although more detail is in the ESRB ratings if you want more specific detail). There is a sequence where multiple NPCs die by suicide, which is out of nowhere and, regardless, is pretty confronting. There are also multiple occasions where you have to bludgeon or stab flocks of seagulls (or some deformed version).  While it’s far from the only game where you’re killing the wildlife (in this case, in self-defence), it may be confronting for some.

When working through my experience as I played Reanimal, I often thought of the “getting a lot of Boss Baby vibes from this” meme when playing this game. And with all due respect to Tarsier Studios, they’re getting to make more of what they do best. Being free of the shackles that could’ve been the Little Nightmares series, it allows them the opportunity to play with the formula more. It is inescapable that Reanimal is a successor to Little Nightmares, which is both to the games’ benefit and detriment. I feel bad having to go back to the devs’ previous work so much, especially while that series continues on. 

Your mileage with Reanimal is really going to depend on how much more of this specific style of game you want. With Little Nightmares III only out months ago, it’s good times for fans of the studio and these games. However, what also helps to pull players into these games more is that there is usually a decent gap in time between titles. It keeps these fairly short jaunts feeling more fresh.

It is unfortunate, because the timing is not Tarsier’s fault. There is so much shared DNA between Little Nightmares and Reanimal. Masked/hooded kids in danger, deformed adults waiting to kill said kids, somewhat familiar scares and tension building, and very similar haunting music. I get it, this is Tarsier’s signature style, and of course you want to build on what you created. Which makes it even harder to say that Reanimal holds onto its previous legacy a little too much.  

Something that does feel different is that the world the siblings inhabit is a more spacious world than the developer has done before. While the previous worlds were more about kids being in a world that is larger than them in size, Reanimal is instead larger with space. This helps draw attention to the tight, claustrophobic spaces where you’re likely to be ambushed. To reach the different desolate and dark places, you’ll be travelling around on the aforementioned little motorboat. To keep moving through the world, you’ll need to explore to find what might clear the way. The boat sequences help to move the story over to a new area, and it only adds to the atmosphere to have this little boat travelling through stylised ruined cities, the wilderness, or anxiously working around sea mines. 

Reanimal, like Little Nightmares III before it, took a few lessons from elements that dragged LN2 down a little. Combat returns, with your boy picking up a crowbar early on for prying open doors and hitting the things that go bump in the night (and a surprising amount of seagulls). While you are often outmatched by the deformed adult people/creatures, there are a few enemies where you’re able to fight back. It works fine most of the time. The game still encourages you to sneak around when possible, but at times combat cannot be avoided. 

The old physics puzzles are also mostly a thing of the past; in fact, there are very few puzzles here. Reanimal is a leaner beast, though still at about 5-6 hours to play through. As with similar games, any longer would be outstaying its welcome. It is a shame as Reanimal feels like it rarely stops to have some more involved puzzles.  

With two main characters taking part in the adventure, Co-op is an option. Whether on a shared console, GameShare, online, or using the Friend’s Pass, there are a few ways to brave the horrors with a friend. Pre-release, there wasn’t the opportunity to try most unfortunately. The game is built with the siblings moving through the world together, so when playing solo, the game AI controls the girl character. Unless something changes specifically in Co-op mode, there are very few moments that utilise coordination between two characters, other than being more vulnerable to both needing to avoid danger. It is still an enjoyable time navigating some of the ways it changes how you play. Be aware that you’re not going to be doing much co-op puzzle solving. 

The biggest obstacle I had to moving through the game was the load times between deaths. Loading isn’t an issue at any other point in the game, but reloading drags it down. It likely wouldn’t hurt the experience as much if it wasn’t a game where you’re not exposed to a lot of trial-and-error deaths, or chase sequence deaths. There are also two or three moments across the game where the previously fine solution stops working, but it works enough that it’s not clear a change in strategy is needed. Combine that with the loading times and it can be particularly trying. 

For the Nintendo Switch 2 version, I found that Reanimal looks good, as much as all the gruesome imagery can look good. The game comes with Performance and Quality modes that can be changed at any time. Quality focuses on more detailed visuals. Performance ups the framerate, while still looking fine. I preferred playing on handheld. I never had difficulty seeing the world around me, while this mode also hides some of the visual hiccups the game had when docked. There are potentially some fixes coming with a day one patch, but overall the game never looks bad (outside of intentional horror).

Reanimal allows Tarsier Studio to spread their wings from their previous titles, while still keeping a lot of their signature style. If you can’t get enough of kids surviving tense, atmospheric, and unsettling horrors, then Reanimal has you covered. It might not reinvent the genre, but it takes steps forward. The main thing is that Tarsier still knows how to make a creepy, dark, and gross, yet exciting game. 

Rating: 3.5/5