Review: Reanimal Revives the Little Nightmares Style Experience

When the Little Nightmares series lost Tarsier Studios as a developer, following its Embracer acquisition, the developer’s absence ended up immediately felt. However, that sort of experience isn’t lost to us. The company’s latest horror adventure Reanimal is a similar sort of beast, though one that’s more gruesome than its past games.   

A boy is in a boat. He’s alone, heading toward an island. As he drives through the dark, he eventually stops and pulls in a young girl from the water, who immediately tries to attack him. They separate, ending the altercation, and move onward. The two are alone, searching for missing friends. What happened to them? Why were they separated? Where are all these hostile beings coming from? Reanimal might not give you all the answers, but maybe you’ll draw your own conclusions by playing.

Like the Little Nightmare series, Reanimal focuses on the horror that comes from being very small children with very limited ways to respond to the hazards around them attempting to traverse foreboding areas. There’s more freedom in how to tackle things this time, as there’s nonlinear progression as you go to different areas to search for missing friends. However, when you are in spaces they are incredibly atmospheric, with occasional puzzles that involve observing surroundings or working with your CPU/human-controlled sibling. There can be traps. You’ll need to use your brain to figure out the right actions to move forward. There will also be major encounters with the sorts of large-scale opponents like we’d seen in Little Nightmares, forcing us to run or figure out a way to successfully deal with what might appear to be an unstoppable force.

Now, in some of those situations I did notice some bugs. The biggest ended up being some frame rate issues in Quality Mode. I did notice that seemed to be addressed in a patch that was released just around Valentine’s Day, however. Performance Mode, which prioritizes frame rate, always seemed to work well. Especially in handheld mode.

I will say that I do wish some elements of Reanimal had been handled a bit differently. The non-linear nature I think takes away from the narrative a bit. While in Little Nightmares 1 and 2, we had a very defined since of things and story being told, the obscure tendencies and vagueness of Reanimal took away some of the punch of some set pieces. It’s also a far darker game with lots of blood, corpses, and unsettling imagery, with lots of references to suicide. Given it’s a horror game, that’s not necessarily bad, but pairing that with the story structure meant I found myself looking for meaning in some of it that didn’t seem to be there. 

On the plus side, the art direction is very good. The locations and perspective used is quite cinematic. This applies to every situation. General exploration, escaping or fighting enemies, and even quieter moments all end up seeing otherworldly and haunting. The enemy design is also quite well-handled, with some truly frightful entities roaming about. 

Another thing I liked about Reanimal is that if you are taking your time or good at handling the dangerous situations, you can come across a number of collectibles. The big one involves finding the five coffins in the world, but it’s also possible to get posters to unlock concept art, masks to change how the brother and sister look, and light candles at statues. It offers a little replay incentive, especially if you want to see a short epilogue or want an excuse to go through the adventure again with someone else.

Speaking of which, the multiplayer in Reanimal works well, but there are some GameShare issues. Only one full copy of the game is needed, with the person owning it as the host. I did notice lag that hampered some of the more treacherous encounters when playing it over the internet with another person. So I think local multiplayer would be the way to go on the Switch 2. If you don’t have someone to play with, the CPU intelligence is quite competent in single-player, and I’d recommend going it alone if you can’t have someone sit in locally to join you on this console.

Reanimal is an ominous, tense adventure that puts you in unsettling situations and leaves you to draw your own conclusions about what’s going on. So much so that it almost feels like the end is only the beginning of analyzing what’s happened here. While short, there are some interesting puzzles and encounters, the pacing is good, the NPC intelligence in single-player is competent, and there’s some great character and environmental design elements at play. A few bugs that will likely be patched out in a few weeks aside, it’s a great horror game. 

Reanimal is available on the Switch 2, PS5, Xbox Series X, and PC.