| REANIMAL | |||
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| Release Date | Gameplay & Story | Pre-Order & DLC | Demo Review |
REANIMAL Review Overview
What is REANIMAL?
In REANIMAL, players explore mysterious islands to save their missing friends, facing environmental hazards, grotesque creatures, and challenging puzzles. The game combines 3D platforming, boat navigation, combat, and cooperative gameplay, with layered story elements and detailed environmental storytelling.
REANIMAL features:
⚫︎ 3D Cinematic Platforming
⚫︎ Grotesque Monsters
⚫︎ Distinct and Detailed Environments
⚫︎ Ambiguous Story threads Encourage Multiple Playthroughs
⚫︎ Co-op With Friend Pass
For more gameplay details, read everything we know about REANIMAL's gameplay and story.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
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 Steam |
 PSN |
 Xbox |
 eShop |
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| $39.99 | |||||||
REANIMAL Pros & Cons
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
 Evolving Gameplay Blending Platforming, Combat, Puzzle & Exploration Emotionally Resonant Story With a Haunting Twist Striking Visuals With Strong Environmental Storytelling Co-op With Friend Pass |
Minor Technical Hiccups |
REANIMAL Story - 8/10
REANIMAL tells a haunting and emotionally resonant story, with engaging siblings as protagonists and a plot twist that follows the game’s internal logic. The pacing balances tense moments with quieter exploration, and environmental storytelling creates memorable, lingering scenes. The deliberate ambiguity can be confusing, making key motivations and connections between events feel underexplained and leaving certain plot threads unresolved. But still, it reinforces the game’s unsettling atmosphere and thematic depth.
REANIMAL Gameplay - 9/10
The gameplay loop is satisfying and varied, blending exploration, combat, puzzles, and navigation across islands and waters. Its controls are responsive, mechanics evolve naturally, and interconnected puzzles reward observation and planning. Minor issues like camera angles, occasional bugs, and slightly sluggish movement exist but rarely disrupt the experience. Overall, the loop is engaging, immersive, and almost flawlessly executed.
REANIMAL Visuals - 9/10
REANIMAL’s visuals shine with distinct, memorable environments, grotesque but fascinating creature designs, and atmospheric lighting that heightens tension. Technical performance is mostly stable, though the camera can be awkward at times, particularly during sequences where it suddenly disrupts framing to compensate for two characters at once. Despite these quirks, the art direction and environmental storytelling consistently reinforce the horror and narrative, making the visuals one of the game’s standout strengths.
REANIMAL Audio - 8/10
The audio is chilling and immersive, with a haunting score, effective environmental sounds, and minimal but purposeful voice acting. Music like the humming during the credits leaves a lasting impression, and sound cues enhance tension and gameplay. Though it loses points for lack of standout tracks, overall, the sound design strongly contributes to the atmosphere and emotional impact.
REANIMAL Value for Money - 9/10
At $39.99, REANIMAL offers substantial value with roughly eight hours of content, replayable puzzles, and cooperative play with Friend Pass support. The game’s tight pacing, engaging mechanics, and layered narrative make the experience feel worth the price.
REANIMAL Overall Score - 86/100
REANIMAL is a tightly crafted, unforgettable horror experience, thanks to its haunting story, engaging gameplay, striking visuals, and immersive audio. There’s hardly any criticism to levy; though minor technical issues like camera quirks, slightly sluggish movement, or a rare chase-sequence bug exist, they never meaningfully affect gameplay. Beyond those small rough edges, this is a tightly crafted, memorable horror experience that rewards exploration, observation, and emotional investment.
REANIMAL Review: More Ruthless Than Any Little Nightmares
Better, Bigger, and Darker
Tarsier Studios is back at it again with their signature brand of nightmare-fueled storytelling, and this time, they’re even more ruthless with the execution. Years ago, Little Nightmares took the world by storm with its eerie atmosphere, unsettling imagery, and that distinct feeling of being small, helpless, and constantly watched.
So when I first saw REANIMAL, I was already paying attention. When I got my hands on its demo last year, something immediately clicked. Within minutes, I knew this wasn’t just another dark puzzle-platformer trying to ride on past success. This was Tarsier sharpening everything they’d learned over the years and pointing it straight at the player’s nerves.
Now, to be fair, Little Nightmares 3 wasn’t objectively bad. It had its moments, and it clearly tried to carry the torch forward. But it also felt different… more distant from the raw, oppressive magic of the first two games. That’s understandable, considering it was developed by a different studio and only loosely connected to the original storyline beyond sharing the same universe. Some fans appreciated that shift. Others didn’t. I personally found myself somewhere in the middle.
But when Little Nightmares 3 released around the same time REANIMAL’s demo was circulating, the contrast couldn’t have been clearer to me. One felt like a continuation handled with care but from afar. The other felt like Tarsier reclaiming their identity.
Even back then, I already had a strong feeling that REANIMAL was their true spiritual successor. The game felt like all their ideas and creative instincts coming together without compromise. Playing the full release only confirmed that suspicion.
This isn’t just "another Little Nightmares-style game." This is Tarsier reminding everyone why they became masters of unsettling and atmospheric horror in the first place. And yes, I’ll say it upfront. In many ways, REANIMAL is better than any Little Nightmares.
Hope Doesn’t Exist In A War Torn World
At first glance, REANIMAL looks like another familiar Tarsier experience. Small and fragile protagonist navigating massive, hostile environments that trigger both claustrophobia and megalophobia at the same time. Everything is oversized. Everything feels dangerous. Everything feels like it could crush you without even noticing you were there. If you’ve played Little Nightmares, you’ll immediately recognize that visual language.
But while it is absolutely all of that, REANIMAL is also something more. Where Little Nightmares centered on Six desperately trying to escape a nightmare world that already felt lost, REANIMAL shifts the emotional focus. This time, you’re not running away from somewhere. You’re going back.
You play as a pair of siblings who return to their ruined hometown after a massive catastrophe has torn it apart, literally separating the area into isolated islands. In the chaos, three of their closest friends have gone missing, scattered somewhere across this broken landscape. What begins as a rescue mission slowly turns into something far more unsettling.
From the very start, the game makes one thing clear, and that is there is no comforting sense of hope waiting for you here. There are no heroic speeches. No reassuring signs that things will turn out fine.
Instead, you’re thrown into a world built on despair, confusion, and dread. Nothing is fully explained. Every location feels like it’s hiding a story it doesn’t want to tell. Every encounter raises more questions than answers. The narrative unfolds through fragments—environmental clues and haunting imagery—rather than clean exposition.
There’s an ambiguity to REANIMAL’s storytelling that runs incredibly deep. It isn’t just mysterious for the sake of being mysterious. It feels intentional… defiant. The game refuses to spell things out for you, and it refuses to offer easy interpretations.
In fact, it takes the entire journey just to begin seeing the bigger picture. And even after the credits roll, there’s a very real chance you’ll still be sitting there, controller in hand, asking yourself what parts were literal, what parts were symbolic, and what parts were never meant to be understood at all. For some players, that kind of narrative opacity might feel frustrating. For me, it became one of REANIMAL’s most haunting strengths.
Drifting Between Ruins, Rescues, and Relentless Escapes
At its core, REANIMAL’s gameplay loop is a carefully balanced rhythm of exploration, survival, and escape. You move through distinct islands, each one feeling like its own self-contained nightmare, searching desperately for your missing friends. Every successful rescue isn’t a moment of relief but rather, it’s a signal that things are about to get worse.
Find a friend. Trigger something terrible. Run for your life. Escape the island. Repeat. That cycle becomes the backbone of the experience.
Each island asks you to navigate sprawling 3D environments filled with unstable structures, hidden paths, and hazards that constantly threaten to knock you into oblivion. Between locations, you’re forced to guide your fragile vessel across dangerous waters, where visibility is limited and danger feels ever-present. Even the "downtime" between levels carries tension, as if the game refuses to let you breathe for too long.
Along the way, you’ll engage with a mix of platforming challenges, combat encounters, and environmental puzzles. Sometimes you’re timing jumps across collapsing platforms. Sometimes you’re sneaking past grotesque creatures that can tear you apart in seconds. Other times, you’re manipulating objects, levers, and mechanisms to open new paths forward.
It’s a surprisingly varied loop, and it keeps the experience from ever feeling one-note. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Because before diving deeper into how all these systems work together, there’s something important we need to do first.
We need to talk about how REANIMAL actually tells its story. And trust me, the way it does that shapes everything else that follows.
Haunting Journey That Circles Back On Itself
"I thought you were dead." Those are the first words the boy says to his sister after pulling her from the water, saving her from drowning. She’s panicked, disoriented, and terrified—so much so that she immediately lashes out at him, attacking in blind fear before the two of them finally calm down and recognize each other.
At the moment, it feels natural. Innocent, even. Of course he’d say that, she was sinking. It’s just a line. A small piece of dialogue in an otherwise quiet game. And yet, by the time I reached the end of REANIMAL, those five words were echoing in my head in ways I never expected.
Because REANIMAL’s story—much like every other aspect of its design—has a habit of circling back on itself. Details that seem insignificant at first slowly reveal deeper meaning. Moments you barely register early on return later with devastating emotional weight. The narrative doesn’t move in a straight line. It coils in on itself, like an ouroboros, feeding on its own past.
What initially presents itself as a story of fragile hope—two siblings pushing through ruined, war-torn landscapes to save their friends—slowly peels away that illusion. Beneath the surface, this isn’t a tale about courage or resilience in the face of darkness.
It’s something far crueler. It’s a story steeped in despair, in broken trust, in quiet disloyalty. In emotional cruelty that isn’t always loud, but cuts all the same. The kind of sadness that doesn’t just make you tear up.
I think the worst part for me is that it’s not something I can properly explain without ruining it. This is a narrative you have to experience firsthand, piecing together its meaning through moments, symbols, and implications rather than clear answers.
Even the ending reflects this philosophy. Structurally, it resolves in roughly the same way for everyone. The events themselves don’t wildly branch. But the meaning behind them? That’s where things get complicated. Depending on how you interpret certain scenes and revelations, the conclusion can feel tragic, hollow, inevitable, or even perversely fitting.
You’ll likely walk away with your own version of what really happened and that’s intentional. This kind of storytelling transforms REANIMAL from a " creepy platformer with puzzles" into something emotionally engaging. It gives weight to everything your eyes could see and your mind can comprehend. You’re slowly uncovering a story that trusts you enough not to spoon-feed it. REANIMAL respects your intelligence and rewards your attention.
Horror That Seeps In Slowly and Refuses to Let Go
Though, out of everything REANIMAL does well—the puzzles, the pacing, the atmosphere, the interconnected world which I'll talk about in a bit—my favorite aspect has to be its horror. And not just because it’s grotesque.
Yes, the game is filled with disturbing imagery, twisted creatures, deformed environments. Unsettling visual motifs that make you uncomfortable just by existing on-screen. That’s expected from Tarsier at this point. They’ve always excelled at crafting things that look wrong in very specific, deliberate ways.
But REANIMAL’s horror goes far beyond that. This is the kind of fear that sticks with. It sneaks back into your thoughts when you’re trying to sleep, making you replay certain scenes in your head, wondering what they really meant and why they made you feel so unsettled in the first place.
Unlike earlier Little Nightmares entries, where much of the horror revolved around running from monsters and surviving set-piece chases, REANIMAL embeds its fear directly into the narrative. The story itself is disturbing. The implications behind events are disturbing. The gradual realization of what’s really happening is disturbing.
The more you piece together, the heavier everything becomes. Every revelation adds emotional weight to the visuals and encounters, transforming them from "creepy scenes" into deeply uncomfortable experiences, creating a lasting impact.
This isn’t disposable horror, it’s thoughtful, layered, and psychologically engaging. It respects the audience enough to know that true fear doesn’t come from cheap jump scares. It comes from atmosphere, implication, and emotional investment.
Now it’s time to talk about how the game actually plays because REANIMAL’s mechanics do more than just support the story. They reinforce it.
Quietly Guided Without Ever Feeling Controlled
Like I mentioned earlier, REANIMAL has this fascinating habit of letting everything circle back on itself—its story, its themes, even its moment-to-moment gameplay. That same ouroboros-like design philosophy extends directly into how the core loop is structured.
On paper, the game is still fairly linear. You move from Island A to Island B to Island C. You rescue a friend. You escape. You repeat. There are no massive open world, no sprawling side-quest systems, no branching questlines.
And yet, it isn't restrictive. That’s because the loop is cleverly divided into two intertwined spaces: the islands and the sea. One moment, you’re exploring ruined towns, army bases, and grotesque farms, solving puzzles and navigating hazards on land. The next, you’re back on your small boat, drifting through fog-covered waters, steering between debris, wreckage, and lurking threats. These two spaces constantly alternate, creating a rhythm that never settles into monotony.
What’s impressive is how naturally the game moves you through them. REANIMAL doesn’t rely on flashing arrows, glowing waypoints, or intrusive tutorials. Instead, it subtly herds you forward through environmental design. Collapsed bridges block one route but funnel you toward another. Light draws your attention. Sound cues pull you toward danger. You’re always making choices. It just so happens that most of those choices gently guide you where the game wants you to go.
More than once, I found myself wandering through twisted buildings and flooded streets, only to realize I had looped back to where I started—standing on the same shoreline, staring at the same boat I arrived in. But now, something is different, a divergent path is now available to me and another path forward is clear. I hadn’t been told to go there, I’d been led back and I hadn’t even noticed.
That design trick might sound small and simple, but it has a huge impact on how the game feels to play. This is impressive because it preserves immersion. You’re never yanked out of the experience by artificial barriers or obvious signposting. The world feels coherent. Logical. Like a real place with real obstacles, rather than a series of levels stitched together for convenience.
It also maintains momentum because you’re always discovering progress organically, the pacing stays tight. There’s no long stretches of confusion, no aimless wandering, no frustration from not knowing what to do next. You’re constantly moving, constantly uncovering something new, constantly feeling like your efforts matter.
REANIMAL is masterfully pulling the strings. It’s subtle. It’s elegant. And it’s one of the reasons REANIMAL doesn’t lose its grip on you once it gets going.
Quiet Exploration to Chaotic Survival on Each Island
The island sections are where REANIMAL first lets you settle into its rhythm and then slowly tears that comfort away. In the early moments, most islands feel deceptively calm. You’re mainly exploring, moving through abandoned structures and twisted landscapes, searching for your missing friends. It’s quiet. Tense, yes, but restrained. You’re observing the world, learning its rules, figuring out how things connect.
Then, almost without warning, the gameplay begins to evolve. Suddenly, you’re not just walking and jumping anymore. You’re fighting.
Enemies start appearing in more aggressive patterns. Situations demand faster reactions. You’re forced into confrontations rather than sneaking past everything. Later on, the game even introduces sections where you’re controlling vehicles and machinery, navigating unstable terrain while trying not to get overwhelmed.
On top of that, the puzzles become more layered. Some require you to manipulate objects across different parts of an island. Others force you to think about how one area affects another. There are even moments where you’re solving problems that stretch beyond your immediate surroundings, linking multiple zones together.
What I loved about this progression is how natural it feels and how the islands never grow stale. Just when you think you’ve figured out the formula, REANIMAL adds a new wrinkle. A new threat. A new tool. A new way to interact with the world. The constant evolution keeps you mentally engaged and emotionally invested, rather than letting the game slip into autopilot.
Open Waters is Another Battleground
If the islands are where REANIMAL tests your problem-solving and platforming skills, the sea is where it proves that nowhere is truly safe. At first, navigating the waters feels like a breather. You steer your boat through foggy channels, weaving between wreckage and ruined structures, enjoying a brief sense of freedom after the suffocating island interiors.
That illusion doesn’t last. Before long, the sea segments begin to evolve in much the same way the islands do, with the introduction of combat. Yes, actual combat.
Creatures begin emerging from the depths. Some stalk you silently. Others attack without warning. And suddenly, your boat isn’t just a means of transportation anymore. It becomes a weapon. A shield. A last line of defense.
This shift completely recontextualizes the ocean. What once felt like downtime becomes another high-stakes arena, preventing tonal whiplash. There’s no "safe zone" in REANIMAL. The tension doesn’t disappear the moment you leave land. Instead, it adapts. It follows you. It keeps your guard up no matter where you are.
It also reinforces the game’s central theme which is vulnerability. You’re never overpowered. You’re never dominant. Even when you’re fighting back, you’re doing so desperately, using whatever scraps the environment gives you. That keeps every encounter meaningful and every victory hard-earned.
Puzzles Stretch Across Islands
One of the biggest surprises for me was just how interconnected REANIMAL’s world really is. In Little Nightmares, backtracking was minimal. Most puzzles were self-contained, solved within the same room or sequence you encountered them in. Once you moved forward, you rarely looked back.
REANIMAL takes the opposite approach. Here, puzzles are layered across spaces, areas, and sometimes even entire islands. You might discover a locked mechanism early on with no idea how to activate it. Hours later, in a completely different location, you’ll stumble upon the missing piece and suddenly realize what it was for.
Some puzzles are separated by vast distances. And I loved that. My favorite example is a moment involving a literal cannon. Yes… a cannon.
On one island, I found an inactive artillery device to be pointed at a creature. No ammunition. No instructions. No obvious way to use it. On another island entirely, was a machine that allowed me to request specific cannonheads and ammunition.
Only after connecting those dots—across multiple locations—could I finally return, activate the cannon, and open a new path. It felt incredible, not because it was complicated, but because it trusted me, the player, to figure it out.
It encourages genuine observation. You start paying closer attention to your surroundings, remembering strange symbols, half-explained devices, and unexplained obstacles. You’re no longer just reacting to what’s in front of you, you’re building a mental map of the entire world.
It also gives your progress real weight. When you finally solve one of these long-form puzzles, it feels earned. It feels like the result of hours of curiosity and persistence, not just following instructions. In a genre where puzzles are often disposable, REANIMAL makes them meaningful, and that makes every breakthrough feel like a personal victory.
Sharing the Nightmare Through Co-Op
The mechanic that highlighted puzzles the most for me—and something I already appreciated during the demo last year—is REANIMAL’s couch co-op.
From the beginning, the game is designed around the relationship between the two siblings. So allowing two players to control them side by side just feels right. It’s not a tacked-on feature. It’s woven directly into the experience.
Playing cooperatively transforms the game. Puzzles become collaborative efforts. Combat becomes coordinated chaos. Exploration becomes a shared discovery. You’re constantly communicating, planning, and reacting together—sometimes calmly, sometimes in full-blown panic.
During the demo, this was already one of my favorite features. In the full release, it’s even better. The levels are clearly built with two players in mind, offering synchronized interactions and moments where teamwork is genuinely required.
And the inclusion of Friend Pass is a huge plus. Being able to invite someone to play with you without forcing them to buy a separate copy lowers the barrier to entry in a meaningful way. It shows that Tarsier actually wants people to experience this together, rather than treating co-op as a monetization opportunity.
While it makes REANIMAL more accessible to a lot more people, it also increases replayability by giving people a chance to hop on the game with just one copy of it. It also creates memorable shared moments that simply don’t happen in solo play.
Technical Friction Fades Over Time
Going into the full game, I was curious to see whether the small issues I noticed in the demo would still be present. Specifically, the occasionally awkward camera angles and the slightly sluggish character movement.
The camera still has moments where it doesn’t quite frame things the way you want. There are situations where depth perception feels off, and moments where your character feels just a little heavier than expected when making precise jumps or quick adjustments. Those elements are still here.
During the short 45-minute demo, the camera and movement issues stood out more. They were easier to fixate on. But across roughly eight hours of full gameplay, something interesting happened. I stopped caring. Not because the problems vanished—they didn’t—but because the game around them was strong enough to carry me past them.
On top of those concerns, I did run into one noticeable bug during a chase sequence. In the middle of a high-tension escape, the game glitched that forced me to restart from the last checkpoint. There are no manual saves in REANIMAL, so when something like that happens, you’re entirely reliant on the checkpoint system. Thankfully, checkpoints are frequent.
I only lost a few minutes of progress, and it didn’t derail the experience in any meaningful way. It was more of a brief interruption than a serious setback. Still, in a game that thrives on immersion and tension, even small breaks like that are worth mentioning.
But again, REANIMAL is a game that excels at every front so once I was fully immersed in the story, atmosphere, and pacing, those minor frustrations faded into the background.
Worthy Heir to Tarsier’s Legacy
By the time the credits rolled, one thought kept looping in my head and that is Tarsier has done it again. They’ve created another haunting, emotionally resonant masterpiece, proving their mastery of minimalist horror and environmental storytelling is no accident. It’s a craft they’ve refined over years, and REANIMAL feels like the culmination of that experience.
Am I sad that they’re no longer continuing the Little Nightmares franchise themselves? Yes. Absolutely. Those games meant a lot to me, and knowing that their original creators have stepped away still stings a little. But am I ecstatic that REANIMAL has stepped up to carry that mantle forward? Also yes. This game doesn’t feel like a replacement, it feels like an evolution.
REANIMAL isn’t trying to imitate past success. It’s building on it, challenging it, and pushing it into darker, more ambitious territory. It stands confidently on its own while honoring the creative spirit that made Tarsier beloved in the first place.
Is REANIMAL Worth It?
Yes, Step Into The Nightmare of Mutated Sheep
At $39.99, REANIMAL delivers a tightly crafted, emotionally gripping experience that more than justifies its price. You’re not just paying for a set of levels with puzzles and enemies; you’re investing in a world that’s carefully designed to haunt you, challenge you, and reward your attention at every turn.
From its interconnected islands to the evolving gameplay loop, REANIMAL constantly keeps you engaged, balancing exploration, combat, and puzzles in a way that never feels repetitive. The story is haunting and layered, and even the minor technical hiccups never break the immersion thanks to frequent checkpoints and thoughtful pacing.
Co-op adds another layer of value, turning the experience into a shared journey of discovery and tension. And when it comes to replayability, the narrative ambiguities mean you’ll likely return to piece together new details and interpretations you may have missed the first time.
For its price, you’re getting a game that’s not just entertaining, but memorable. It’s tense, it’s smart, and it respects its audience. This isn’t a "watch your friends play and be mildly entertained" kind of title. It’s an experience that grabs you from start to finish, and for anyone who enjoys horror, mystery, and clever game design, it’s more than worth the price.
| Digital Storefronts | |||||||
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| Steam |
PSN |
Xbox |
eShop |
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| $39.99 | |||||||
REANIMAL FAQ
What is REANIMAL’s Actual Story?
The story of REANIMAL is intentionally open to interpretation. Visual cues, events, and character actions may or may not represent what they first appear to, leaving much of the narrative ambiguous. What is clear is that the siblings’ hometown has been plunged into chaos—whether this is the result of war, a curse, or some darker force is left for the player to interpret.
What is the Significance of the Lamb in REANIMAL?
The lamb is one of REANIMAL’s recurring symbols, blending innocence with horror. Traditionally, lambs are associated with sacrifice, and in the game they are twisted into monstrous forms that reinforce the world’s brutality. The imagery invites players to interpret how purity, sacrifice, and corruption evolve within the narrative, making the lamb both a literal and symbolic representation of the game’s darker themes.
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REANIMAL Product Information
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| Title | REANIMAL |
|---|---|
| Release Date | February 13, 2026 |
| Developer | Tarsier Studios |
| Publisher | THQ Nordic |
| Supported Platforms | PC (Steam), Switch 2, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S |
| Genre | Horror, Adventure, Co-op |
| Number of Players | 1-2 |
| ESRB Rating | T |
| Official Website | REANIMAL Official Website |
