REANIMAL Review

Little Nightmares was an interesting, if flawed 2.5D platformer. It was a creepy trip through a distorted world, the atmosphere and environment were immaculate, and it made a lot of sense that it sold well and generated two sequels. My biggest complaint of those was that it was often hard to judge the jumping sections because of the perspective, and the controls were often unforgiving leading to a lot of deaths that felt like an engine problem rather than a player one.

The developers, Tarsier, did not work on the third iteration last year and instead they released REANIMAL and for those that see some similarities – yes it looks a lot like Little Nightmares.

The major departure is that Tarsier have tweaked how the game deals with its camera – it is a lot more 3D this time around – and there is also co-op, both local and online.

The game starts off on a body of water, a lonely boat floating adrift. The atmosphere is incredible, with the sounds of a far-off bell, and the lapping of the water against the boat mixing well with the moody visuals. The co-op experience starts a little after that, with the occupant of the boat finding his sister and the second player will control them.

The two then end up on a lonely beach where they set off to find their friends.

I cannot stress how much Tarsier has done a fantastic job with the visuals. The initial oppressive fortress where a janky man spends his time washing and ironing the flaccid skins of the population, which is when he isn’t stalking the children in an ice-cream truck, or emerging from bloated corpses to chase them. The team is more inventive on how these vistas are delivered, previously it was expected that the player was going to be on foot and traveling (mostly) from left to right. The new, dynamic camera means that REANIMAL has more variety. One section is shot entirely from the back as the player explores a flooded town; the camera pulls back into an isometric view for a chase sequence in misty wood; the two protagonists become tiny as they traverse a dense field towards a slaughterhouse, etc. This makes the world feel bigger, and more cinematic. The inspirations seem to be that of early Jean Pierre Jeunet and Jean Caro collaborations like City of the Lost Children and Delicatessen. Both have a distinct colour palette, while being more creepy and unsettling, rather than outright horror.

I think this works well for REANIMAL. It allows the game to explore macabre themes like dust children, scared of the light, and unsettling maw-spiders without resorting to jump scares and graphic gore (although there is some viscera in there). It ends up playing out like a good children’s fairy tale as a result rather than just a gruesome game for the sake of being gross.

Much of my original mechanical complaints are gone too. The new camera allows for it to be easier to judge the jumps, and some generous auto-grabbing means that jumps that would have gone wrong are now much better. The Co-Op is an excellent addition too, with the puzzles and platforming working in tandem fluidly.

That said, there is a glaring problem that is endemic to the horror/horror-adjacent genre, and it is phenomenon I call the ‘Pantomime Participation’ problem. The reason I call it ‘Pantomime’ is because a popular event in English kid’s camp theater is for a person appearing behind the antagonist/protagonist and the audience yelling “Behind You”. The comical tension comes from the fact that every time the protag/antag turns around the person skips from their line of sight and the audience get to cackle/squeal at their inability to catch the culprit.

There are multiple sections of REANIMAL that are incredibly tense; for example, one scene requires creeping past a looming monster, and all it takes is one misstep for that creature to come chasing for your character and end the event. That tension is shattered once it becomes clear that it is very easy to get caught and then it becomes a trial-and-error event rather than a challenge. Pantomime Participation requires the person not get caught for the tension to work, but to be a game the threat must be real.

This problem appears in a lot of different places and once I missed what was supposed to be the cue for what I was supposed to do next – I had to witness an execution and then reload and go through the whole “He is behind you!” rigmarole that is no longer entertaining the 3rd or 4th time.

When all things are properly aligned REANIMAL is riveting, so much is worth seeing. It suffers from problems that are a genre problem rather than unique to this game.

Conclusion

REANIMAL is a great step in the right direction for Tarsier’s portfolio, though with all the improvements there are still some problems with its execution.