I could feel the crease in my brow stiffen as I picked my jaw up off the floor. For the third time that day. And it wasn’t because of some cheap jump scare. It was because of the sights. The sounds. The sheer, unfiltered wrongness of what Reanimal kept putting in front of me.
After letting go of the reins of the Little Nightmares franchise, it was hard not to wonder what Tarsier Studios would cook up next. The expectations were there. The curiosity was there. And thankfully, they didn’t just hit the ball out of the park.
In Reanimal terms, they knocked the eyeball clean out of its socket.
I want to make this clear: Reanimal feels like a true evolution of the Little Nightmares formula. Darker themes. Bigger set pieces. Higher stakes. And surprisingly, among all the strewn body parts and industrial decay, there’s still a bit of heart beating underneath it all.
For fans of Little Nightmares, who are used to that signature 2.5D side-scrolling perspective, Reanimal makes a bold shift. It goes full 3D, blending over-the-shoulder exploration with carefully placed fixed camera angles for dramatic effect. It’s the first major evolution of this monster, and it makes a difference. Seeing these horrors in full perspective not from the side, not framed like a twisted dollhouse changes how you experience them.
Reanimal is also designed as a co-op experience. Full disclaimer: I played the entire game solo. That said, I can already tell this is the kind of horror that would hit harder with a second player beside you. Sharing those tense chases, those “did you just see that?” moments.
And for anyone worried about dragging in a less experienced partner, don’t be. The game isn’t brutally demanding in the way some co-op titles can be. It strikes a balance. Challenging enough to keep you engaged, but forgiving enough that you won’t be shouting at each other over missed jumps. I can easily see someone finishing this with a non-gamer friend and walking away with shared trauma instead of frustration.
There were a handful of moments where the AI companion forced a checkpoint restart, whether by refusing to move, getting stuck on a ledge, or occasionally pulling me off one, and while there are cooperative mechanics such as pushing and pulling a saw together or prying boards loose as a duo with a crowbar, I found myself wishing the co op design leaned further into meaningful teamwork, as outside of a few specific sections it rarely feels essential to the overall experience.
In Reanimal you play as Boy and Girl. What fate has in store for them, you never really know. What they have done in their past, what led them here, the game leaves that space open. You are left to wonder.
It begins with Boy out at sea, pulling what looks like Girl’s lifeless body from the water. For a brief moment it feels final. Then she wakes. And just like that, their odyssey begins. Their journey takes them through war torn towns swallowed by dust and decay. Forests that bleed into abandoned settlements. Farms neglected and open water that feels isolating instead of freeing.
And like its predecessors, dread follows you everywhere.
You will find bodies hanging from poles. Pigs left to fend for themselves in grotesque enclosures. Children made of webs, twisted into something that feels less like fantasy and more like neglect given form. None of it is accompanied by long explanations. The game does not pause to tell you why any of this happened. It just places you in the middle of it and lets you move through it.
And slowly, without realizing it, you start moving differently.
There was a moment where I found myself crouching down and inching forward through a hallway that had nothing in it. No enemy. No sound cue. No threat. Just space. But the game had already taught me to expect something.
Reanimal conditions you.
The sound design plays a huge part in this. Machinery hums in the distance. Wind howls across open sections of water. The wind turbine area in particular feels oppressive. The space is technically open, but you never feel safe in it. Even silence feels suspicious.
We have been wired by Reanimal’s predecessors to think of progression as a straight line. You move from one section to the next like a train ride, station to station, each stop a new horror waiting to be endured.
Reanimal does not follow that track.
The line bends. It loops back on itself in surprising yet satisfying ways. Spaces reconnect. Shortcuts reveal themselves. Areas you thought were behind you suddenly become part of your present again. It honestly took me back to that moment in Dark Souls when you take the elevator down from the Undead Parish and find yourself back in Firelink Shrine. That quiet realization that this world is not just a sequence of rooms, but something thoughtfully intertwined.
Boy and Girl’s odyssey has you sneaking past towering, monstrous figures that remain pure nightmare fuel. Some twitch and crawl in unsettling ways. Others loom over you, massive and deliberate, large enough to make you feel small all over again. The variety keeps you guessing. You never quite know what shape the next threat will take.
A mutated seagull that moves like something stitched together from hunger and rage. An ice cream man who uses dead bodies to teleport, disappearing into one corpse only to reappear from another. It sounds absurd when written down. In motion, it is deeply unsettling.
The chase sequences are still here, and they are as effective as ever. You know a chase works when you genuinely do not know what is about to happen. When the camera tightens, when the music swells just enough, and when your only thought is whether you can make it to the next ledge in time.
Combat is present, but only in a few sections. Boy swings his crowbar with blunt force, while Girl relies on her knife to carve out just enough space to survive. These encounters are not frequent, but they land hard. Quick. Messy. Visceral.
There are moments in Reanimal that feel almost overwhelming in how much detail has gone into them, even if you only spend thirty seconds there.
One that stuck with me was the theatre.
Rows packed with bodies. Not scattered. Not chaotic. Seated. Arranged. You are forced to walk straight down the middle aisle. There is no alternate path. No clever detour. Just you brushing past still forms as you move forward. It captures that strange, uncomfortable feeling of squeezing past strangers in a crowded cinema.
Except here, they are all dead.
Then there is the whale lodged inside the hull of a ship. Massive. Biblical in scale. It just sits there, unexplained, like something the world tried and failed to hide.
What really struck me though was the sheer awe of it all. The set pieces are meticulously crafted. You can feel the hours poured into spaces you might only pass through once. The chase sequences in particular stand out. The attention to detail is unbelievable, and that care only amplifies the horror. When something starts pursuing you, you are running through a place that feels deliberately built, layered with history and decay.
That scale, that craftsmanship, makes the fear hit harder.
Beneath the horrors, the grotesque figures, the dread and even the triumph, Reanimal carries an underlying message about friendship. And for lack of a better term, the consequences of friendship.
While the adventure is controlled by two, the experience is shared with their group, the Orphans. You are not just moving forward for yourself. You are moving for them. The game makes it clear that doing the right thing is noble. Going back for someone is brave. Saving someone is admirable. But in this world, no good deed goes unpunished.
There is a quiet thread running through Reanimal about how consequence does not exist in isolation. One person’s choice rarely stays contained. It bleeds outward and on to the very people who try to help.
There are people willing to shoulder your burden. To stand beside you while you confront what you have done or what has been done to you. But sometimes, without realizing it, they begin to sink under it too.
Consequence in this world grows. It takes on new shapes. It sprouts another set of arms. Maybe a few more teeth. Unless you confront it. And how sometimes, that may not even be enough.
What impressed me most is how confidently Tarsier Studios expands on what came before. The shift in camera perspective. The larger set pieces that elevate the scale. The added immediacy of combat. None of it feels like change for the sake of change. It feels deliberate.
My playthrough clocked in at around five hours, and not once did it feel padded or stretched thin. There was no wasted space, no unnecessary detours. Just a steady build from one haunting moment to the next.
Reanimal is not just an evolution of a formula. It feels like a studio finding its full voice. Sharper. Bolder. More willing to push its own darkness. This is what nightmares become.
This review is based on a PS5 code provided by the publisher/develoer.
REANIMAL (PS5)
Reanimal is not just an evolution of a formula. It feels like a studio finding its full voice. Sharper. Bolder. More willing to push its own darkness.
The Good
- Atmosphere
- Setpieces
- Level Design
The Bad
- Lack of Meaningful Co-op sections
