The woods in Reanimal are full of surprises. You will encounter human cadavers that slither like snakes, gigantic talking pigs, and, at one point, a forlorn, supersized whale who seems resigned to an agonizingly slow death. These variously monstrous beings inhabit a realm that, though it looks like our own, seems to defy spatial logic: the forest leads to an oceanic expanse, which segues into a decrepit, towering city. It’s like Aesop’s Fables meets the nightmare visions of both Lars von Trier and J.G. Ballard.
Playing as a boy and girl (either solo or via local / online co-op), Reanimal evolves the premise Tarsier Studios explored with its first two Little Nightmares games: the timeless terror of children being pursued by larger, looming monsters. But the camera in this action-platformer is more fluid and dynamic. It feels less like you are peering inside a doll’s house and more like you are seamlessly directing these characters through a miniature film set. Another notable departure: For all its unsettling darkness, Little Nightmares always carried a little storybook charm. That quality is largely absent here. Reanimal is darker, nastier — and stronger for it.
The game begins on water, with you following dimly lit buoys; you reach a beach and open washed-up suitcases to find a key. From there, you venture into what seems like a hydroelectric facility. Inside, there are light puzzles to solve as you move forward, though nothing so taxing as to impede your progress for very long. The pair you’re controlling (referred to simply as “Boy” and “Girl”) can jump and grab objects; later, they wield a crowbar, useful for prying open doors or whacking smaller enemies. If you have played either a Little Nightmares game or a title by Playdead (the Danish studio’s landmark first game Limbo or 2016 classic Inside), then the action will feel instantly familiar.
The revelatory moments arrive via finely crafted details: These child protagonists carefully and reassuringly usher one another into each newly discovered room. I love how upon each restart after dying (perhaps in the jaws of a monstrous foe or by tumbling down a sheer drop), the duo are shown hugging one another — the only comfort they have in this terrible world.
Yet these children are made of steely stuff. For every panicked sequence fleeing a gigantic sheep down a blood-red corridor, there is a moment when it is these youngsters who are doing the chasing. Reanimal, like forebears dating all the way back to 1991’s Another World, delights in showing you enemy figures loping ominously off-screen through some crack or hole in the wall. You must follow, plucking up the courage to trail these beasts into inky shadows.
Reanimal takes some time revealing where its strikingly macabre, exquisitely haunted images are leading. The key moment occurs with the arrival of a soldier wearing a Brodie helmet popular in World War I; a few scenes later, you discover coastal artillery. Tarsier toyed with wartime motifs in its Little Nightmares games, notably the pile of shoes that recalled the heaps of belongings found by Allied soldiers at Nazi extermination camps in West Germany. Reanimal’s allegory is more explicit: At one particularly gruesome moment, you must evade the shots of a sniper stationed high in a building. Fail to find cover quickly enough and the young boy or girl’s body is ripped apart by a speeding bullet.
Image: Tarsier Studios
Tarsier’s latest operates in a different tonal zone to the jingoistic, popcorn warfare of the Call of Duty series and the amped-up-to-11 absurdity of Battlefield. Its solemnity evokes the trench sequences from the first Death Stranding game and finely calibrated dread of 2024’s underrated survival-horror title Conscript and action-adventure Hell Is Us.
That said, for all Reanimal’s achievements, it falls just a little short of greatness. The game doesn’t possess the same crystalline, airtight polish of Playdead’s work. Some transitions between scenes are a little abrupt, and on a few occasions, I had to reload because of a glitching character. Such is the literal darkness of the game, coupled with the choices of perspective, that distinguishing between the fore and background is a struggle; cue the odd accidental fall.
None of this greatly impacts what is a frequently bold and brilliant game. Since 2017, Tarsier has made children’s nightmares for grown-ups; despite its young protagonists, Reanimal is a nightmare wholly born from the anxieties of adults. It seems to speak to both the horrors of the 20th century and our barbarous present in which large-scale on-the-ground conflicts between sovereign nations have regretfully reemerged.
I’m still running the story’s deeper meaning through my head. But regardless of the conclusions I eventually draw, there is no denying the sheer verve and power of the images that Tarsier summons on screen. Bodies — human or otherwise — disappear into bodies; children are doomed to wield the weapons of grown-ups (if they are not torn asunder by them first). The game also harbors a fascination with the spectacle of popular entertainment, delivering showstopping moments in both a cinema and theater.
Reanimal does not flinch; this action-platformer delivers a parade of atrocities you cannot take your eyes off of.
Reanimal launches February 13th on the PS5, Xbox, PC, and Nintendo Switch 2.
