Reanimal is the best thing Tarsier Studios has ever done, and it’s not even close.
While the Swedish outfit’s latest creation may look a lot like its previous series, Little Nightmares, it comfortably tops the two titles. The developer has fine-tuned its mixture of action and platforming to perfection, then revolutionised its visual and audio efforts to fashion a true atmospheric nightmare. Reanimal is intense and unusual — it represents this style of video game horror at its best.
Tarsier Studios refines what it achieved in the first two Little Nightmares games, polishing the experience for a new setting. In terms of gameplay, Reanimal doesn’t do much new; it remains a title about platforming, hiding, chase sequences, and some light combat.
However, how the game transitions from each sequence to the next is done with such confidence that it never feels like you spend too much time doing one thing. Every minute of the six-hour run time feels like it’s been treated with a fine-tooth comb.
Either in single player or (local and online) co-op, you play a brother and sister trying to escape an island full of terrors. Much of the story is left to interpretation, with vague cutscenes breaking up chapters and very little dialogue between the siblings and their friends.
It’s interesting, especially as the game transforms from one location to the next, but ultimately ambiguous.
This is no bad thing, for Reanimal charms in other ways. It begins with the gameplay: you and your sister use a boat to carve a path through the island. When the way is blocked, you head inland to face the horrors calling it home.
Across chase sequences and puzzles, contorting monsters will appear and then disappear through dead bodies in the environment. You have to keep to the shadows and work out a means through, or a way of either distracting or killing them. In between those sections are short respites of linear progression and environmental tests.
You could attach the same description to the developer’s past two games, and it’s true: Reanimal plays very similarly to Little Nightmares. What elevates it beyond those creations is it maintains a consistent and varied pace across all its activities.
Reanimal keeps itself fresh by allowing its elements and settings just enough time to breathe before taking a new turn. You won’t encounter the same kind of puzzle twice nor a repeated monster encounter or chase sequence.
It builds to a fantastic final act that embodies the rest of the game, placing its features and mechanics on a pedestal and pairing them with brand new kinds of threats and challenges. Reanimal ends on a high in its best sequence, making the journey there all the more worthwhile.
The title’s only big drawback is a returning flaw from past Tarsier Studios games: trial-and-error gameplay sequences. While it is, of course, possible to beat the game without dying once, certain scenarios feel almost designed in a way to be beaten on maybe your third or fourth try.
This is because there’ll be the occasional challenge or enemy encounter where you’d have little to no chance of successfully reacting to what happens without any prior knowledge. This can lead you to having to load a checkpoint four to five times to work out what you need to do and then actually carry it out.
And sometimes, it’s not even your fault. We found the odd on-screen interact prompt to be slightly buggy. Especially when aiming weapons at enemies, the icon to confirm you’ll hit the target doesn’t always appear. It’s not a big deal overall, but the (fixable) issue gets in the way of the fun from time to time.
Otherwise, the visual and audio presentation of Reanimal is sublime. The way it combines rare flashes of colour with an oppressively dark graphical style hands the title a look all to itself. As it mutates from one chapter to the next, so too do the graphics.
Complementing them is a dark, intense soundtrack full of abnormal audio cues that get under your skin. The game puts you on edge, no matter the setting or how safe you might seem. It all comes together to fashion a true horror experience where the terrors on-screen are just as frightening as those off it.
On its third attempt at the concept, Tarsier Studios smoothly outperforms all its previous work to create its best horror game to date.
Conclusion
By improving upon its work from the Little Nightmares series, Tarsier Studios has crafted its greatest horror game yet. Reanimal is an impressive, smooth mix of action, platforming, and top-of-the-line presentation. It’s a very gripping and intense experience, both in solo play and co-op.
