Reanimal Will Prove No One Survives Adolescence Unscathed

Reanimal Presents Nightmare on Fuzzy Animal Street

Everything in Reanimal feels grander in scale, with the use of older characters making their potential gruesome deaths feel slightly less terrible than in the studio’s past titles. However, it remains utterly hilarious when a player accidentally falls to their death during a difficult jumping puzzle. These deaths are even more funny when a co-op partner is right there witnessing the failure.

Furthermore, the Gamescom demo for Reanimal began on the shore of a desolate beach, showcasing early gameplay. In classic Tarsier fashion, cooperation with another player was essential to get through a locked door and progress inland. Although a clear goal was not immediately provided, the suffocating atmosphere made it overwhelmingly obvious that safety was not guaranteed.

Following the Reanimal preview, a huge question remained: was some unseen entity watching these players’ every move? Additionally, the pair eventually arrived at an abandoned train yard littered with decaying luggage and the remnants of rotting corpses following the developers’ guidance. While this setting isn’t exactly a lovely place, the immediate objective became finding the missing wheels for a kart to escape into a nearby tunnel system.

Truly Beastly Good Sequel to Little Nightmares

According to Tarsier Studios, Reanimal is a spiritual successor to Little Nightmares. This connection becomes vividly clear the moment one picks up a controller. In the core gameplay, players must progress through various obstacles, including:

• traveling through eerie environments
• solving puzzles by gathering components
• running or hiding from massive, screen-filling adversaries.

For players choosing to experience the game alone, it can still offer a fun time, as AI will control the other teenage character. Given the title and recent trailers, many enemies are confirmed to take the form of giant, malformed animals that crawl across the landscape as if begging to be put out of their misery. Whether these grotesque creatures have unique behaviors and weaknesses in Reanimal is the biggest question regarding their gameplay.

A Truly Grizzly Co-op Experience

With its environmental storytelling, explaining the cataclysmic events that broke this world and why a group of teenagers must now traverse its horrors for survival will be a top priority. Ultimately, Reanimal draws inspiration from games like Inside and Limbo even more than it does Little Nightmares, due to its perpetual tension and forward momentum.

Furthermore, a broader narrative and cast not seen in Reanimal‘s brief demo were hinted at in a handful of character models on a nearby table. So, what other horrors and allies await these teenagers in the full game? While Tarsier’s ambition is palpable, the game’s journey could potentially be physically larger and emotionally more mature than anything they have created before.