Review: REANIMAL - Tarsier Studios Returns with a Bigger and Better Nightmare

I grew up on a small, fog-cloaked island not unlike the one depicted in REANIMAL. I spent my childhood exploring its lush forests, squeezing into my local cinema, and groaning whenever the island disappeared beneath a dense blanket of fog. So from the moment Tarsier Studios’ latest nightmare revealed its setting, it already felt eerily familiar.

As a long-time fan of the Swedish developer known for its work on Little Nightmares I & II, I went into this review with some pretty clear expectations. Now, fifteen hours and three completions later, I can honestly say REANIMAL is a much bigger kind of nightmare… just not the one I was expecting.

Part of that expectation gap stems from my lingering feelings towards Little Nightmares III. And I don’t think I was alone in feeling underwhelmed by it. This isn’t me throwing shade at Supermassive Games for taking over the series - what they delivered was a solid, safe entry that stayed close to the source material. Its biggest sin, honestly, was the lack of couch co-op.

What really bugged me was the timing. Around the same moment in 2023, Bandai-Namco announced the new Little Nightmares, Tarsier Studios teased REANIMAL: a co-op horror adventure that, frankly, looked more like a true Little Nightmares threequel than the actual game itself.

In REANIMAL, you play as ‘Boy’ or ‘Girl’ - two aptly-named and questionably dressed siblings on a quest to reunite with their lost friends: Hood, Bandage, and Bucket. God, I love this naming convention.

Silly names aside, I want to keep my thoughts on the game’s narrative brief though, because saying too much would dampen the mystery and intrigue lurking beneath REANIMAL. This dark, twisted tale is largely left up to player interpretation, and it’s one I continue to ponder long after the credits rolled (for the third time). Tarsier’s minimalist approach to dialogue, its emphasis on environmental storytelling, and its deeply uncomfortable encounters all work in perfect harmony. 

It’s properly bleak stuff - exactly what you’d expect tonally - but it’s far more effective when you’re left to connect the dots yourself. It’s better this way, trust me.

Over roughly six to eight hours, you’ll move through a series of uniquely disturbing locations, from a stuffy, run-down movie theatre to a hulking 60,000-tonne battleship, with plenty of unnerving surprises along the way.

REANIMAL is massively creepy, with an uncanny atmosphere so thick you could choke on it. Tarsier Studios deserves its flowers for a first-class effort in environmental and character design. Every person, and thing, on this morbidly rich island feels engineered to test your stomach. Plunging toilets is bad enough, but sucking up someone’s slimy, slender, birthday suit was what initially made me wretch.

You can brave these horrors alone in single-player, assisted by a competent AI companion, or share the scare with a mate via online OR local couch co-op (take notes, Supermassive). Together, you’ll solve environmental puzzles, rescue your friends, and try your best not to get snatched by some properly grotesque monsters.

Whichever way you choose to play, you’re well catered for. I opted for the solo approach on my first run, but co-op works really well, with a camera that handles two independent thinkers far better than expected. Stick together, folks. Teamwork is mostly surface-level - boosting your companion, prying doors open together, and pushing a little railway tram from point A to B - but it rarely goes much deeper than that. This ain’t no Split Fiction.

That simplicity feeds nicely into REANIMAL’s greatest strength: tension and flow. Its puzzles strike a smart balance, asking you to think without ever tipping into frustration. They feel fresh yet familiar, intuitive enough to solve even with something horrid breathing down your neck.

As you progress, however, the experience begins to open up. Historically, Tarsier is known for keeping its tiny heroes on a tight leash, guiding them through narrow vents, hallways, and streets along carefully curated linear paths. REANIMAL still follows that structure - but it also introduces extended sections of open traversal, most notably large bodies of water navigated by a small wooden motorboat, with sea mines lurking between you and your next destination.

Provided you’re not thalassophobic, these sections offer plenty of space to breathe and encourage curiosity-driven exploration. Sailing between locations deepened my immersion, connecting the game’s more traditional areas and giving the island a stronger sense of scale and cohesion, however undercutting the sense of constant dread it wants you to have.

That broader scope is matched by a notable shift in player agency. Tarsier empowers its iddy-biddy kids with harpoons, knives, and crowbars, nudging the experience away from pure horror and closer to action and drama. In moments where I’d expect to feel vulnerable and in need of a clean pair of pants, I’m instead clobbering heads, harpooning bloated enemies, and briefly feeling like an action hero. 

You’re still a fragile, squishy kid, of course, and learning when to run and hide remains a large part of this game, but the shift is clear. It’s less scary than I expected from Tarsier Studios, yet it never feels out of place.

Trophy hunters have plenty to dig into, from collectible posters and masks to other secrets tucked away in its many corners - which I love. Not much hooks me quite like a Tarsier Studio Scavenger Hunt. 

My experience with the Nintendo Switch 2 version was mixed, however. Quality mode is noticeably prettier than Performance when docked, but it can dip below a consistent 30fps in certain areas. I’m told a day-one patch should resolve most of these issues, though it didn’t bother me enough to toggle modes - Performance is steadier, but the visual downgrade wasn’t worth it for me.

Conclusion

REANIMAL feels like a twisted evolution of the Little Nightmares blueprint. The tension remains sky-high and the nightmare fuel is very much intact, but this time it’s paired with action and exploration that feel genuinely fresh.

It’s easy to judge the game based on what we’ve seen from Tarsier Studios before, and whilst it looks familiar, its more bombastic approach adds a new layer of narrative complexity. Which I’m mostly on board with. REANIMAL is undeniably creepy and well worth picking up on Nintendo Switch 2.

Are you excited for REANIMAL? And will you be picking it up on Nintendo Switch 2? Let us know in the comments.

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