When booking appointments for Gamescom, we often receive vague descriptions of games that have not yet been announced to help us decide whether the topic in question is suitable for our publication.
One of the dates I had booked was “unannounced horror game” published by THQ Nordic. As I sat there during Opening Night Live watching the trailer for Reanimal, I realized what I had gotten myself into.
When I saw the trailer, like many others, I thought, “This looks crazy” (or even worse words). And now that I've tried it, I can confirm that it is indeed crazy, 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? “A spiritual successor is probably the most obvious thing I want to achieve,” 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, especially in the shift from 2.5D platforming to a purely three-dimensional environment.
The game's story is still linear. Marvik said the goal is still to follow a single narrative with a beginning and an end and no branching, but there is also room for 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 turnaround from that.
“Even though I only got to play the first 15 minutes of the game, there were enough set pieces to make me fidget in my seat, much to the amusement of the development team watching.”
There's also the option to play locally 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'd hoped, but the entire game can now be played alongside someone else, which can be a blessing in particularly gruesome moments.
And there are certainly gruesome moments. Even though I only got to play the first 15 minutes of the game, there were enough set pieces to make me squirm in my seat, much to the amusement of the development team watching.
The main antagonist – at least in the early part of the game – is a giant spider-like creature with human hands, a hair-covered body, and a gaping chasm where a face should be. Admittedly, the typical speed-dating clientele in a place like Hull, but no less terrifying as it crawls towards you, occasionally “laying” small, mannequin-like creatures to stalk you.
This is where the switch from 2.5D to 3D really comes into its own. Reanimal makes liberal use of cinematic camera angles that heighten the tension. The large arachnid chased the heroes up a large spiral staircase at one point, with the camera pointing directly at them from above as they ran up the spiral staircase, certain death crashing down behind them.
When it then reappeared, a new chase sequence took place, with the creature and the children running into the screen, the latter hopping over obstacles along the way. The constant change of camera angles in each scene gives the game a presentation that is completely different from Little Nightmares.
Reanimal is still in its relatively early stages of development. The code I played was a pre-alpha version and the developers told me it didn't look quite as good as they would have liked, although I had no problems. So it remains to be seen whether this 15-minute burst of slow-burning tension followed by breakneck terror is a reflection of the game as a whole.
While the game isn't entirely novel mechanically so far – moving 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 perspective – it seems that the success or failure of Reanimal will come down to how terrifying the creatures are and how well they are used to strike fear into the player's pounding heart.
In that respect, what I've seen so far shows that Tarsier is absolutely on the right path, even if that path is full of unspeakably horrific spider bites and creepy little doll people.