Reanimal review - The old Little Nightmares team is back, but this isn't what I wanted

Before launch, the discourse around Reanimal seems to largely be its theme, and as Tarsier is renowned for leaving the heavy lifting up to the players, Reanimal's Reddit is already alive with fan theories.

Going into this, I had my own theories, the most immediate being that this was a commentary on the environmental impact of toxic waste being dumped into the water, poisoning nature, turning something inherently good into something rotten. I also thought about animal cruelty, as the mutated animals are positioned as the enemy - could it be an allegory for consumerism, and our inability to see livestock as more than a product? The trailers also featured war scenes of trenches and soldiers, so in the most watered-down theory I had, is it just a game about violence, and the senselessness of it? Then there's the treatment of children, and what it says about society's protection of them - like animals, innocent until corrupted by the brutality of life. And I guess right at the end of all that, is humanity the real monster? None of it is looking good for us.

The possibility of all these intense theories became so all-consuming that I forgot to worry about whether Reanimal would actually be a good game. You begin by sailing towards an island on a boat, dragging your sister/brother from the water on your way towards the beach, depending on who you're playing as.

Like Tarsier's previous games, Little Nightmares 1 and 2, Reanimal is split up into chapters, each chapter being a new area that must be infiltrated to rescue your friends. Along the way, a Big Bad will show up throughout the level, leading to a final showdown that usually means running away and killing it somehow.

The first level starts in the sewers, detouring through a train graveyard, a forest of skin-trees (skins hanging from branches, I don't know how else to describe it), and finally into a city where the first building we encounter is a cinema. It's a lot, and though Reanimal is undeniably gorgeous and does a great job of showcasing its beauty from the get-go, I'm already at odds around what this area is, or what it's meant to represent, and how this level's Big Bad fits into it. He doesn't seem to have any real theme, apart from portalling through the stomachs of dead bodies and putting some clothes in the washing machine.

It's an issue that plagues Reanimal, especially as we explore more of the island, unable to determine what makes each area unique and how it relates to the boss that haunts it. Fans on Reddit theorize that each level is a reflection of the child's worst nightmare. I see it, I like it, and it's not untrue, but it's just not explicit enough in its truthfulness, either.

Another thing to consider is that this game is so very bleak. I spent most of my gameplay time sad instead of scared, and though the first level boss is terrifying, everything that follows is upsetting. The nastiness of all of this made it hard to just have fun, which doesn't make for a good co-op experience.

I played with Nat, another senior staff writer at PCGamesN, and at one point we were comforting a pig shaking in the corner. It made me feel gross instead of unsettled, and straight-up ruined my Friday night. This might be the intention of Reanimal - to create impactful moments that make you uncomfortable in your actions and rethink your life choices (for anyone who watched Chicken Run as a child). But it becomes too much - there isn't so much a sense of dread as there is disappointment. Even when the mutated animals do appear, I just want to leave them alone.

The game is also linear, but puts energy into trying to create depth to make us feel small and the island large and insurmountable by having scenes between each level where we climb on our boat, navigate our way through mines, and have enemies plopping into the water to try and kill us. Fortunately, we have endless harpoons to toss at them, which detracts from any real peril, and though there are moments where we have to be sneaky, there are more moments where we can brute-force it. This mainly comes after we're given weapons, a crowbar, and a knife, so any tension and atmosphere built up in stealthily making our way through shadowy corridors quickly disperses as we start swinging. Then there's the reinforcement that in some scenes crowbars are okay, and in others it means instant death, and you have to trial this out a few times.

Reanimal's mechanics are strict, so when we constantly have to repeat intentionally dramatic moments as we've not quite got it right, it detracts from any tension that has built, with the camera angles being particularly fiddly and unforgiving in co-op. The camera also never lets you stray too far from each other, which is fair, but when you're fighting for your life, it becomes tedious and sometimes buggy trying to make sure we both cross the safety checkpoint at the right time, or even just go the right way, which is distressingly far from obvious at times.

The puzzles are light - they mainly consist of 'this door is locked, find the key,' and though some ideas work, like needing to find petrol for a getaway van or wheels for a cart, it was more about pressing switches to see what they did, or crowbaring a door open. Some of the reasons behind our actions made it difficult to know what to do next or fully explain the why of it, which ended up being frustrating. It seemed to be related to the game's insistence on making the island feel big, despite enforcing a prescribed route anyway.

Though there's a lot to admire in Reanimal, from the gorgeous art style to the impressive boss designs and 'fights,' I found myself thinking a lot about Little Nightmares when playing. As someone who made Little Nightmares my personality for a while, a lot of the magic of the games: the big twists, the reflection of each boss in the area they patrolled, the vulnerability of the main characters; it was all part of a story that was worming its way towards something bigger, without ever becoming bloated. I can't say that Reanimal achieves that, though it's no doubt created something that people will talk about. I'll just have to sit those theories out.