REANIMAL Review
REANIMAL is the Little Nightmares 2 sequel that fans deserved, which isn’t aimed at supermassive, but simply indicative of how much horror platformers are engrained in the DNA of Tarsier Studios, as they have now been honing their craft for well over a decade on the genre since the idea for the series started bouncing around in the early 2010’s. Little Nightmares 3 was fun, but it was iterative. REANIMAL is much more of an evolution of the formula as it has a familiarity, yet it’s distinctly different.
Tarsier studios are still doing what they’ve done best with their previous cult classics. However, the world they have created in REANIMAL feels much more alive due to the entire experience being much more open and explorable, instead of being mostly confined to 2.5D with the occasional 3D section. Previously, you could only marvel at the haunting dioramas that Tarsier crafted, now you’re allowed to explore them.
This perspective change blurs genre lines and greatly increases the environmental storytelling, but where REANIMAL really shines are the set pieces that left my jaw on the floor and the wide swath of breathtaking locations that the adventure takes you.
Despite Tarsier evolving their craft across the board, the puzzles lacked challenge, the set pieces were stunning, but left little margin for error and sadly, the experience ended as it felt like it was just picking up momentum. It might have felt like a generic Tarsier experience at the start, but by the end, REANIMAL was a genre evolution that I was not prepared for.
9
If you want a review with a little more nuance and detail, continue reading or watch the video below.
IS REANIMAL THE LITTLE NIGHTMARES 2 SEQUEL FANS DESERVE?
REANIMAL is a dark, atmospheric horror adventure that is full of symbolic imagery. The twisted Swedish minds at Tarsier Studios have once again crafted a disturbing and grotesque world, but almost impossibly, they have somehow managed to push farther into darker, and more macabre territory. From the very beginning, REANIMAL will constantly find ways to get under your skin with it’s non stop oppressive atmosphere.
In REANIMAL, you play as two nameless kids known simply as The Boy and The Girl who need to go through hell to rescue their three friends known as Bucket, Bandage and Hood. After starting the game alone and adrift at sea in a captivating cinematic moment, REANIMAL settles into familiar and safe territory, which initially had me concerned that REANIMAL was just going to be more of the same, as the early experience felt extremely familiar to their work on Little Nightmares 1 and 2.
However, after REANIMAL lulls you into a false sense of security, it pushes forward into new territory and never looks back as you constantly search for glimpses of light in the darkness. There is a moment in the game where you are forced to blow up a WW2 naval mine, but it is floating just below the words HOTLE and this felt like Tarsier saying that you might think of LIMBO as the pinnacle of atmospheric horror, but we are evolving the experience starting now as you continued on the boat towards the background.
The gameplay is safe and has a familiarity to it as you will do what you’ve done before including sneaking, jumping and climbing, but the focus of REANIMAL is making sure you become fully immersed in the experience.
The horrific atmosphere and tension on display throughout REANIMAL and the minimal gameplay ensures that you can become fully engrossed in the experience. REANIMAL shows a studio maturing as they become less interested in jumspcares and more interested on increasing the tension right up until the final scene.
What surprised me the most about REANIMAL was the variety of locations that the experiences takes you to. Moving from place to place was an experience on it’s own, as there was a high attention to detail on cinematography, which captured the foreboding nature and hopelessness of the journey. Arriving at every new location was breathtaking and felt like entering a new piece of concept art. The scale and haunting beauty of each location is unmatched.
Moving from these locations is seamless as REANIMAL is about as binge worthy as a game can be. The combination of the locations, as well as the progression of the story never allow for a dull moment making sure you always want to see what’s around the next corner. The tension also remains ever present throughout due to some incredible lighting, eerie audio effects and a haunting score.
One thing that Tarsier Studios have always excelled at is leaving their experiences open to interpretation, as the best art does. REANIMAL takes this step further than before, as there are many different themes intertwined throughout. What I thought the game was about constantly changed throughout the experience as I was endlessly combed the world for clues. REANIMAL could be about friendship, the harm that humans do to the world, each other, it could be about the horrors of war or it could even be about the metaphorical war that is constantly going on all around us in nature. What’s less open to interpretation is that long after the game is over, REANIMAL will stick with you as you try to untangle the twisted meanings within.
REANIMAL can be played completely single player as well as local or online co-op. My preferred way for playing horror titles is alone, which allows you to become fully immersed and worked perfectly as The Girl controlled exactly as you would want her too. The computer never spoiled any of the solutions, got stuck somewhere abandoned me or breaking the immersion.
REANIMAL CRITICISMS
One of the biggest issues with REANIMAL is that the puzzles didn’t pose enough challenge. As much as it felt like the rest of the experience pushed the limitations of the studio with the story, gameplay and the art direction, the puzzles were almost an afterthought. Most of the time, the solution to the puzzle was in the exact same room. The ones that took multiple steps were the most satisfying, but they also didn’t ask much of the player on an intellectual level. The lack of challenge on the puzzles felt like a missed opportunity to create synergy with dark and ominous atmosphere and heighten the overall experience.
Although Tarsier pushed themselves with the set pieces in REANIMAL, they were also occasionally frustrating because they left minimal margin for error. Sometimes, when running towards the camera, it can be hard to predict an item that needs to be jumped over, and one wrong step usually resulted in a fail state. Although the set pieces are short, having to redo them from the start lessened their overall impact when you have to do them multiple times.
As is common for the genre, the experience of REANIMAL was very short. Most people will likely finish in around 5-6 hours and while it’s better to be too short than too long, it seemed like there was still more story to explore. There are also already three planned DLC’s coming post launch, so they definitely have more story to tell within the universe of REANIMAL.
REANIMAL SCORE AND FINAL THOUGHTS
REANIMAL is exactly the type of psychological horror that you’d expect from the minds behind Little Nightmares 1 and 2, which is great baseline to start from. What wasn’t expected was just how much a slight perspective change would evolve the experience. Tarsier now have more freedom to greatly increase the scale, broaden their environmental storytelling and even go into darker territory than before. As a result, this epic adventure through hell is much more immersive than their previous work, as REANIMAL shakes up the status quo of the genre.
