REANIMAL Review — Childhood Fears

I wouldn’t say that Little Nightmares II & III left me feeling disappointed, but there was certainly a tonal shift from the original. These titles felt less unsettling and mature than the first game, which was especially true in Little Nightmares III, which was developed without the original developer’s involvement. Knowing that the original team was the one that worked on REANIMAL, I knew the game was likely going to be something of a return to form for them, but even still, I can’t say that my expectations were all that high.

You could definitely say I was surprised when I actually got the chance to play REANIMAL and discovered that it was far darker, far more unsettling, and just downright scarier than even the original Little Nightmares ever managed to be.

I’ll admit that REANIMAL starts slowly. My first twenty minutes in the game were rather uneventful, and while I knew this was being done on purpose to build my suspense, I quickly found myself worried that I could already predict what was coming, and that the game was going to be nothing but another “big freaky monster chases children through a world that wasn’t made for them” game. It was when what I can only describe as “skinsuits” started to slither towards me like snakes that I realized I really didn’t know what to expect.

Don’t get me wrong, that flavor of “small person in big scary world” is still very much present in REANIMAL. It’s kind of the iconic theme created by the team behind the game and a big part of what turned Little Nightmares into a successful series rather than just a one-off game. It makes sense that Tarsier Studios would want to continue to use their iconic formula even without the rights to their original series.

That being said, even this familiar aspect of REANIMAL is twisted and changed into something different. Where Little Nightmares could be said to be a warped version of a child’s perspective of the world, REANIMAL feels much more like an exploration of childhood trauma, a theme that becomes blatantly obvious when you find yourself running from a creepy man driving an ice cream truck.

However, it’s not just the big, obvious scares one might expect from a game delving into the topics of life-scarring childhood events. Sure, the fear of large, scary-looking adults with unknowable intentions is a very present and very relatable fear, but the game also seems to tie in all of these tiny traumas I’m sure we all had to deal with growing up.

Maybe I’m reaching a bit here, but the scene in which I was forced to navigate through a packed movie theater aisle, past the legs of countless corpses, not knowing which one might jump out and attack me, felt like an exaggerated version of a very real moment that would have left me stunned with anxiety as a kid.

Speaking of exaggeration, the scale of the world around you and the monsters that pursue you in REANIMAL don’t feel quite as large as they do in Little Nightmares. Everything is, of course, still exaggerated in size to really make you feel that sense of being small and hopeless, but the world doesn’t feel so large as to be alien to you. You genuinely feel like a child that could exist in this world, with the scale sort of being how we all remember things being much bigger when we, ourselves, were smaller.

That only further reinforces the theme of childhood traumas, as the things out to get you don’t feel like they’re from another world but are a danger close to home, something that should be trustworthy and friendly but isn’t. It encapsulates that betrayal of childhood innocence when you realize that not every grownup is kind or helpful and that some might even want to hurt you.

REANIMAL was a surprise. I went into the game expecting more of the same from a franchise that I thought was beginning to lose track of itself. It’s fitting, then, that a game so reinventive has a new name, feeling more like a resurrection or rebirth rather than just Little Nightmares IV.

Clocking in at just under eight hours, REANIMAL can be played through by you and a friend in a single sitting, and while the story is good, it can leave you feeling like something is missing or that questions are left unanswered.

With three DLCs already announced before the game has been released, this feels kind of intentional, as if REANIMAL is supposed to be sort of an unofficial episodic release. While these DLCs are said to be standalone adventures, it makes you wonder what answers were purposefully removed from the main game only to be shared with those who play future, paid content. Arguments could be made that content already planned for DLC should have just been included in the base game, though I’m sure much of this planned content hasn’t even entered development yet.

Still, REANIMAL more than impressed me, serving as a shockingly good horror experience that genuinely frightened me without ever resorting to jump scares. It follows the formula of its parent series enough that fans will find more of what they loved in the first place, but it challenges its audience with new, darker themes and formulaic twists that make it a far more mature, unsettling, and unpredictable experience. As a fan of the original Little Nightmares, REANIMAL far exceeded my expectations and revitalized my interest in the original studio behind it. I simply can’t wait to see what they have to offer us next.

Try Hard Guides was provided a Steam code for this PC review of REANIMAL. Find more detailed looks at popular and upcoming titles on our Game Reviews page! REANIMAL is available on Steam, Xbox, PlayStation, and the Nintendo Switch 2.