Gaming: Upcoming Reanimal Review
Reanimal doesn't meaningfully develop Tarsier's approach to gameplay in the Little Nightmares games, but it's a grim sight to behold, and a worthwhile horror adventure.
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What is it? Filmic survival horror by the creators of Little NightmaresRelease date February 13, 2026Expect to pay $40Developer Tarsier StudiosPublisher THQ NordicReviewed on RTX 3060 (laptop), Ryzen 5 5600H, 16GB RAMSteam Deck TBCLink Steam
After eight hours spent in the near intolerably dark world of Reanimal, I'm still not confident I know what it's about, or why it's called Reanimal. The newest game from Tarsier Studios shares a lot in common with the Little Nightmares series it created, but this is a more disturbing and dismal outing, having shaved away most of the subtle, blackened whimsy found in its previous games. It's an often stunning horror game that understands the importance of ambiguity and mystery in a genre that usually opts for the easy resort of gore.
Reanimal's central protagonists are a brother and sister duo. When playing alone I controlled the brother, but in cooperative play—both splitscreen and online—one player controls the sister. Neither are named, and their relationship is vague and sometimes mysteriously combative. I meet them on a foggy ocean, commandeering a dinghy towards the towering cliff faces of a wartorn island. We're here to retrieve three friends from the maw of annihilation. The circumstances under which we lost these friends are never explained, nor is it spelled out why this island is so utterly destroyed, and stalked by gargantuan animal mutants.
What follows is a horror game that sticks to the Little Nightmares format of creeping around dank locations, sometimes stealthing around giant monstrous threats, and occasionally—usually as a climax—running from a pursuing colossus.
Except in Reanimal, Tarsier opts for a fixed 3D camera perspective that is closer to old survival horror than Little Nightmares, which usually plays out from a sidelong perspective. This doesn't make a significant difference to how Reanimal plays, but it provides Tarsier with the tools to capture the doomy scale of the island, whose grimy, near greyscale expanse takes on a painterly aspect as a result.
This is a seriously beautiful game, with its strange commingling of dome
Source: PC Gamer
