Reanimal review: A beautiful and twisted experience

As I used my crowbar to bat away a faceless man from the side of a speeding ice cream van, which I had to quickly jump into after human skin suits had slithered with gusto towards me, I realised I still had no idea what was going on in Reanimal and how I actually quite like it this way.

Horror as a genre in the gaming space has become a wide umbrella that delivers so many unique experiences and deeply unsettling stories to tell. Tarsier Studios' games one hundred per cent fall into this abstract sphere of horror.

While yes, there’s a jump scare or two – what is horror without that in moderation? – what they do so well is play in the space of creeping discomfort, slow dread and quiet confusion.

Moving away from the Little Nightmares series, Tarsier has come at this new concept with everything in its toolkit. The visuals are twisted and cold, almost like a Hieronymus Bosch painting crafted into a living diorama.

The monsters appear like a distorted vision of the real world, as if AI had generated one of those images that look real on first blush, but on closer inspection, you can’t actually name a single item within its frame.

(To be clear, Tarsier Studios hasn’t used AI in the making of Reanimal to the best of our knowledge – a fact we’re always happy to hear.)

Whether you choose to play by yourself or experience Reanimal with a friend, you’ll go on a starkly weird adventure with Girl and Boy, in a bid to find and free their friends from the grip of monsters within the crumbling world around them.

If you’ve played Little Nightmares before, you’ll get to grips with how Reanimal plays fairly quickly, as on the surface level, it shares so much of its DNA. Where Reanimal changes the formula somewhat is in how you interact with the world itself.

Firstly, it has a somewhat open-world sandbox feel to it, with a large amount of the chapters allowing you to freely wander back and forth through the map; there’s even a boat you’ll use for a large chapter to explore. Masks can be found and swapped out, should you want to bring a little fashion into the nightmare, from Tim Burton-esque fish heads to a simple bucket; there’s something for everyone’s taste.

More interestingly, however, is the chance to fight back with some light combat mechanics. We’re not talking prompted quick time events either. A wrench or crowbar comes in handy for taking swings at smaller enemies or seagulls.

If you’re not a seagull fan in real life, Reanimal won’t do much to change your mind about them. You’ll also get your hands on some harpoons to launch at landmines and bloated corpses looking for their next meal.

Without spoiling too much, as you venture deeper into the world of Reanimal, the moments of combat get slightly more intense and grander in scale as you head towards the tale's conclusion, and this scope creep is true in all of the game's facets.

The art design and world get bigger, almost swallowing the game's characters whole as the music swells and haunts you – pushing you into abandoned orphanages, dilapidated towns and across bleak war-torn landscapes.

As mentioned earlier, a big point of Reanimal is its focus on co-op. You can experience it solo, with the game's AI taking over as Girl and giving you the means to ask for some help holding a switch in place or pulling a lever in tandem.

But while it’s competent, we had a few struggles from time to time with Girl not remembering to follow despite being called multiple times, or glitching on a ladder. The worst case resulted in a mild game lock state as we’d dropped down from a large cliff, and Girl hadn’t followed, leaving us unable to move forward or back to save her with a push.

Usually, a quick reload of the last checkpoint got us unstuck, but it definitely cemented for us that this really is built to be experienced with a friend.

Not just from a technical relief standpoint, but the way some of the puzzles are designed, it seems like they’d be elevated from a sometimes frustrating foil to a fun challenge for friends to unpick, with one rather tricky floor puzzle you navigate while tied together springing to mind.

By this point, I’ve still probably not explained even half of what I saw or felt playing Reanimal, and I think it speaks to the Lynchian style of narrative Tarsier has delivered. It’s stuck with me. I want to and will experience it more times, but it’s clear that while it's created something to chew on mentally, it doesn’t wish to explain things any plainer than that. And how can I not love that?

Reanimal is a beautiful and twisted experience that any horror fan should enjoy, be it alone or with a friend for the ride.

Reanimal Launches Friday 13th February for PC, PS5, Xbox Series X/S and Nintendo Switch 2.

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