Reanimal Is A Bleakly Beautiful And Disturbing Journey Into The Unknown

Tarsier Studios, the developer behind the acclaimed Little Nightmares series, has returned with its newest creation, Reanimal. After spending eight hours navigating its near-intolerably dark world, it’s clear that this title shares much of the same DNA as its predecessors, yet it carves out its own distinct identity. This is a more disturbing and dismal outing, having stripped away most of the subtle, blackened whimsy that characterized the studio’s previous games. Released on February 13, 2026, for $40, it stands as an often stunning horror game that deeply understands the power of ambiguity and mystery in a genre that too often defaults to the easy shock of gore.

It’s an experience built on atmosphere and visual storytelling, a grim spectacle that proves to be a worthwhile horror adventure. For any fan of the genre, this is a compelling Reanimal review of a title that prioritizes unsettling beauty over straightforward scares.

The story centers on a brother and sister duo, the game’s central protagonists. When playing alone, control is given to the brother, but cooperative play, available in both splitscreen and online modes, allows a second player to control the sister. Neither character is named, and their relationship remains intentionally vague, at times feeling mysteriously combative. I meet them on a foggy ocean, steering a small dinghy toward the towering cliff faces of a wartorn island. Their mission, as it is understood, is to retrieve three friends from the maw of annihilation. However, thanks to PC Gamer, we know the circumstances that led to this perilous rescue are never explained. The game offers no exposition as to why this island is so utterly destroyed or why it is stalked by gargantuan animal mutants. This deliberate lack of information sets a tone of pervasive uncertainty that hangs over the entire journey, forcing the player to piece together meaning from the haunting environmental clues left behind.

What follows is a horror experience that largely adheres to the established Little Nightmares format. Players will find themselves creeping through dank, oppressive locations, carefully navigating around giant, monstrous threats that patrol the shadows. These tense stealth sections are punctuated by moments of high-octane crisis, typically culminating in a desperate chase sequence where you must flee from a pursuing colossus. However, Reanimal distinguishes itself by opting for a fixed 3D camera perspective, a design choice more akin to old-school survival horror than the sidelong perspective of Tarsier’s previous works. While this doesn't fundamentally change how the game plays, it provides the developers with the tools to capture the doomy, overwhelming scale of the island. The grimy, near-greyscale expanse of the world takes on a painterly, almost beautiful aspect as a result of this cinematic framing.

This is a seriously beautiful game, its aesthetic power derived from a strange commingling of domestic, military, pastoral, and apocalyptic imagery. A significant portion of Reanimal unfolds in benighted, panoramic exteriors, where the path forward is bordered by impenetrable darkness or unfathomable chasms.

At times, the game even allows for limited exploration, often aboard the aforementioned dinghy, which can sometimes be equipped with harpoons for brief, desperate moments of defense. The island of Reanimal flows illogically, transitioning from flooded towns to industrial backwaters and then to unnervingly sun-kissed meadows. Each location, no matter how different, feels similarly tainted by a sense of having borne witness to some unthinkable atrocity.

It becomes apparent that Tarsier is far more interested in composing the perfect shot or the most arresting point of view than in refining how its game feels to handle. This becomes a noticeable problem in sections like the dinghy traversal, where full control over the camera feels essential but is not granted. For the most part, Reanimal follows the blueprint of Little Nightmares with a precision that borders on formulaic.

The puzzles are rarely less than super obvious, while the other core mechanics—stealth, light combat, and chase scenes—feel almost perfunctory, serving as functional but secondary elements to the game’s powerful imagery and atmosphere. Even the pacing sticks closely to the dictates formed by the studio’s past work; there is a lot of walking through tight areas, a lot of balancing across perilous beams, and at least one instance where I had to find a crank to turn a wheel. Some puzzles rely on collaboration between the two protagonists, but they don't demand cleverness, nor are they cleverly designed.

Sometimes I wondered why Reanimal is a game rather than a film, especially as Tarsier Studios has brilliantly evolved its cinematic knack here, but has not meaningfully improved its approach to game design. The foreshadowing of every new gargantuan foe plays out the same way: you see a little bit at a time, before you finally see a lot, usually during chase sequences that lean heavily into trial-and-error gameplay. Yet, to call it style over substance would imply that this isn't fun to play, and it mostly is, especially with a friend. I genuinely wanted to see this sickly thing through to its conclusion, not because I craved answers about the fate of its protagonists or their world, but because it is consistently a genuinely, beautifully disturbing thing to behold.

It is remarkable just how resistant Tarsier is to developing its approach to horror gameplay. But where the mechanics stagnate, the storytelling has become more sophisticated. Reanimal is a bleakly impressionistic game that knows loredumps, moralistic didacticism, and buckets of blood are antithetical to genuinely disturbing horror. More specifically, it takes Tarsier’s familiar “little people in an oversized hostile world” theme and extends it beyond implied domestic abuse and childhood trauma.

The world of Reanimal is dipped in a terminal madness. When the protagonists speak—which they do, albeit sparingly—their voices are deadpan, expressionless, and exhausted, as if they are already inured to the chaos that surrounds them. "Do you know why we're here?" asks one of the tiny figures around the halfway point. By then, any answer has lost its utility. "No idea," is the barely enunciated reply. It's possible that Reanimal has no point, that it’s just a new outlet for Tarsier's sickly set pieces and tense pursuits. It is a much bleaker affair than the Little Nightmares games, and better for it, but it would be nice if it were as complex in the hands as it is conceptually.