Reanimal Review: A Co-op Nightmare We'll Never Forget
From the original Little Nightmares team, a short, terrifying, unforgettable co-op journey. Find a friend who scares easily and play it together.
Reanimal comes from Tarsier Studios, the team behind Little Nightmares 1 and 2 (not 3). It got off to a rough start on PC. The promised Friend's Pass, which lets one copy cover a co-op partner, launched on PlayStation and Switch 2 but not PC. The developer said "soon." The game got review-bombed within the hour. Then publisher THQ Nordic stepped in, and it was live a few hours later. Josh was salty enough to post about it, and we nearly canceled this episode. Developers: please just delay a day.
Once we got in, though? Wow.
What is Reanimal?
Take your brain, open up your skull, mush it all around in a big circle, close your skull back up. That's Reanimal.
You play two siblings crossing a twisted island in a boat, collecting lost friends and trying to survive. It's horror-adjacent, with no gore, but it's deeply creepy, full of grotesque creatures that move wrong and, as Josh noticed, all want to eat you. Josh and Ryan played together, and Ace played with his partner.
The gameplay sounds simple: get from point A to point B. Find wheels for the rail cart, hunt down a key or bolt cutters, sneak past a monster, distract another, and solve light environmental puzzles. This time there's a bit of combat too, mostly shanking seagulls with a crowbar (and occasionally your co-op partner). Somehow, adding combat didn't make it any less scary.
These kids know where they're going. You have no idea. You're just along for the ride.
The monsters
Everyone had a different creature that got under their skin. For Josh it was the giant pig. For Ace, the old man with the snakeskin who slithers after you. For Ryan, the moth thing with the huge open mouth. And there's an underwater sequence late in the game, collecting an eye in the dark while flares flash a terrible face right behind you, that Ace still thinks about.
Like living a nightmare
The story? We beat it and still couldn't really explain it. That's kind of the point.
It's like trying to make sense of a dream. You can't explain it to somebody, but when you experience it, it makes sense.
The atmosphere is second to none. Josh thinks it blows Little Nightmares 1 and 2 out of the water. The second half ramps up beyond anything we expected: a trench full of soldiers, a sniper's crack in the distance that made Josh flinch every time, and a finale that will stay burned into our brains. (No spoilers, but at one point Josh said out loud that he wished they could drive a certain vehicle, and the game gave them exactly that.)
And co-op is half the magic. Both of us panic, run, and crash into walls at the same time. On the rope-tied crumbling-rocks section, Josh and Ryan "accidentally" killed each other about 30 times.
The gripes
- It's short. About 5 hours (5.4 for Josh and Ryan, goofing around and hunting masks) for $40. The math gets better with the Friend's Pass: split it with a buddy and it's basically $20 each.
- A slowish start. The first couple of hours are just good. The back half is incredible.
- PC technical issues. Ace's first session left his partner's camera stuck under the boat, the finale wouldn't load in co-op so he had to finish it solo, and he dealt with crashes, frame drops and rubber-banding. Josh and Ryan had almost no problems.
The VGP take
Ryan gave it a 9.2. It's one of the best games he's played this year, he couldn't wait to get back to it with Josh, and he wants to play it again. Josh gave it a 9.0:
I'm giving it a nine because I think everybody should play this game at some point.
Ace also gave it a 9.0, technical issues and all, because there's nothing else like it.
Grab a friend who scares as easily as you do, turn off the lights, and play Reanimal. Even if you've heard every spoiler, you need to feel this one for yourself.