HANDS-ON: Reanimal is a (literal) new dimension in horror from Little Nightmares studio Tarsier

Often when booking appointments for Gamescom we’re given vague descriptions of games that haven’t been announced yet, to help us decide whether it’s the sort of thing that fits our publication.

One of the appointments I booked for was “unannounced horror game”, published by THQ Nordic. As I sat there during Opening Night Live, watching the trailer roll for Reanimal, I realised what I had signed up for.

When I saw the trailer I, like many others, thought “this looks messed up” (or stronger words to that effect). And having now gone hands-on with it I can confirm that yes, it certainly is messed up, but in the best possible way.

Reanimal is the latest game from Tarsier, the studio behind the first two Little Nightmares games. With that series now in the hands of Supermassive Games, Tarsier is now working on this… spin-off? Homage? “Spiritual successor is probably as close as I’d want to get,” narrative director David Marvik told me.

Despite the obvious thematic similarities – the first two Little Nightmares were dark horror games with child protagonists, and Reanimal follows suit – there are clear differences here, most notably with the switch from 2.5D platforming to a more fully 3D environment.

The game’s story is still linear, with Marvik saying the aim was still to follow a single narrative with a beginning and an end and no branching paths, but there’s also scope for some exploration later in the game when the two protagonists get a boat (though it was stressed that it’s definitely not an open-world game). Marvik joked that The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker was an inspiration – tonally, this is a complete 180 from that.

“Even though I only got to play the first 15 minutes of the game, there were enough set-pieces here to have me squirming in my seat, to the mirth of the development staff watching.”

There’s also the option to play local and online co-op, something Little Nightmares 2 didn’t have despite having two protagonists. The game can still be played solo with an AI companion and from what I played they behaved as well as I could have hoped, but the entire game can now be played alongside someone else, something that may be a blessing during particularly grisly moments.

And there are certainly grisly moments. Even though I only got to play the first 15 minutes of the game, there were enough set-pieces here to have me squirming in my seat, to the mirth of the development staff watching.

The main antagonist – at least in the early part of the game – is an enormous spider-like creature with human hands, a hair-covered body, and a gaping chasm where a face should be. Your typical speed dating clientele in somewhere like Hull, granted, but no less terrifying when it starts crawling towards you, occasionally ‘laying’ little mannequin-like creatures that chase you.

It’s here where the switch from 2.5D to full 3D really comes into its own. Reanimal makes liberal use of cinematic camera angles which ratchet up the tension. The big spider-beast chased the heroes up a large spiral staircase at one point, with the camera pointing directly down from above as they sprinted up its winding steps while certain death crashed up after them.

Then, when it made another appearance, a new chase sequence took place with the creature and the children running into the screen, the latter hopping obstacles along the way. The constant change of camera angles in each scene give the game a presentation that’s completely different from that of Little Nightmares.

Reanimal is still relatively early in development – the code I played was pre-alpha and the devs told me it wasn’t quite looking as good as they wanted it yet, though I didn’t have any issues – so it remains to be seen whether that 15-minute burst of slow tension followed by breakneck terror is a reflection of the whole game.

So far, however, while mechanically the game isn’t entirely novel – the switch from 2.5D to 3D may be a refreshing change for Tarsier Studios but there are obviously plenty of cinematic platformers that use a similar viewpoint – it feels like what’s going to make or break Reanimal will be how scary the creatures are and how well they’re used to strike fear in the player’s pounding heart.

In that respect, what I’ve seen so far shows that Tarsier is very much on the right track, even if it is a track filled with unspeakably horrible spider-pricks and creepy little doll-people.