It's been nearly four years since Tarsier Studios waved goodbye to Little Nightmares after being snapped up by Embracer Group, giving developer Supermassive a crack at the much-loved Bandai-Namco-owned horror series. So what's Tarsier been doing since then? Well, it turns out the studio hasn't quite shaken off its fascination with spooky kids in scary places, as one look at its latest project, the newly unveiled Reanimal, makes clear.

Reanimal's gloomy nightmare-fairytale aesthetic, its gangly-limbed monsters, and its two young protagonists - all evident in its announcement trailer - are unquestionably reminiscent of Tarsier's Little Nightmares series. And while that's certainly no bad thing given the studio's oft-brilliant work on those games, it's not entirely clear after a half-hour press briefing, just how substantial a departure - beyond two key features - Reanimal will be from what's come before.

Reanimal tells the story of an orphaned brother and sister trapped in hellish version of the island that used to be their home, as they embark on a quest to rescue their three friends. It's a violent world of gloomy forests and decimated buildings, where empty bags of skins hang from trees and hideous, animalistic creatures roam. It's also one that's aiming for a "darker and grittier" tone compared to Tarsier's previous horror games.

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Tarsier Studios, the original developers behind the hit horror puzzler Little Nightmares, have announced their next horror game, REANIMAL. The game is in development for PS5, Xbox Series X|S and PC.

Reanimal looks to keep a lot of the same kind of terror and tone as Little Nightmares, but will feature a new world, setting and menace, while putting co-op play front and centre. The story follows a brother & sister as they go through this hellish world to try and find their missing friends and then escape a place that they used to call home.

You’ll always play as a duo, whether that’s playing solo with an AI buddy, or in co-op, with support for both local and online play – you can pick which of the two you want to play as. There’s a shared, directed camera to try and keep you together, sharing the scares along the way, and there will naturally be plenty of gameplay elements that rely on the two of you to work together to progress and escape.

This fantastical new horror setting is a fragmented island that you’ll explore by boat and on land, with the game keeping the “small people being hunted by bigger creatures” vibe of Little Nightmares. The horror that is now haunting them, and which tore apart their world stems from a shared past that they have with their friends, and has unleashed monsters with more of an animalistic feel. Tarsier is trying to imbue this world with a sense of violence, so that even an otherwise pleasant pine forest is twisted with nastiness, an industrial region is fogged up and threatening, and there’s literal violence in how the kids’ home was destroyed.

We’re big fans of the Little Nightmares games, and while Bandai Namco is taking that series forward with Supermassive Games taking over the reigns for Little Nightmares III, it’s great to see Tarsier continuing to explore this genre and style of horror game with Reanimal.

From the creators of Little Nightmares, Tarsier Studios, is a darker, more terrifying journey than ever before - REANIMAL.

The post REANIMAL: A New Horror Adventure from the Creators of Little Nightmares appeared first on TheXboxHub.

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A lot of trailers for several games were presented at Gamescom 2024 Opening Night Live. And while I’ve posted the most important ones in separate articles, it would be a shame to overlook all the others that aired. Thus, I’ve decided to collect all of them and share them in one big article. This is … Continue reading Gamescom 2024 trailers for Monster Hunter Wild, Reanimal, Towerborne, ARC Raiders and more →

The post Gamescom 2024 trailers for Monster Hunter Wild, Reanimal, Towerborne, ARC Raiders and more appeared first on DSOGaming.

Little Nightmares DNA runs strong in Tarsier Studios’ new game. So much so, in fact, that I’d assumed the trailer I watched during an online preview event last week was for a new entry in the horror cinematic-platformer series, right up until the name Reanimal appeared on the screen - shortly followed by a snippet of voiced dialogue.

It’s not just the horror setting, but the Grimm’s fairytale threat, the distorted adults-made-monsters through the trauma-tinged lens of a child’s imagination. A long-limbed man riding a bicycle in a threadbare suit chases children down an alley. A gangly, bowler-hatted pursuer scuttles down a long table like a spider. It's familiar enough territory, at least at first glance. But when Tarsier have a body of work subconsciously scarred by phantasms this vivid, recurring nightmares are just as potent.

Read more

Little Nightmares DNA runs strong in Tarsier Studios’ new game. So much so, in fact, that I’d assumed the trailer I watched during an online preview event last week was for a new entry in the horror cinematic-platformer series, right up until the name Reanimal appeared on the screen - shortly followed by a snippet of voiced dialogue.

It’s not just the horror setting, but the Grimm’s fairytale threat, the distorted adults-made-monsters through the trauma-tinged lens of a child’s imagination. A long-limbed man riding a bicycle in a threadbare suit chases children down an alley. A gangly, bowler-hatted pursuer scuttles down a long table like a spider. It's familiar enough territory, at least at first glance. But when Tarsier have a body of work subconsciously scarred by phantasms this vivid, recurring nightmares are just as potent.

Read more

Tarsier Studios, the developer behind the critically-acclaimed Little Nightmares series, announced its new title during Gamecom 2024's Opening Night Live, Reanimal. The title looks similar to the Little Nightmares games but has a distinctly new and much more terrifying series of monsters to avoid.

While we were only shown a brief glimpse of Reanimal, it was enough to demonstrate exactly what the gameplay looks and feels like. Players take on the role of two tiny characters a brother and sister duo, and find themselves lost in a world where creatures much bigger than them lurk. They must constantly run, hide, duck, cover, sneak, crawl, and evade colossal, strangely altered animals in order to find some sort of small sense of safety while being constantly hunted.

Don't stop running

As you can see in the trailer above, the animals in Reanimal aren't quite what you expect them to be. There's an anthropomorphic pig sitting at a table, seemingly waiting to eat the protagonists, something with too many arms for me to sit comfortable while look at it riding a giant trike, and a sheep with a body and way too long a neck.

Every monster is wrong in a way only Tarsier Studios knows how to make them, and that's what's most terrifying about Reanimal so far. The place where these creatures reside is where the protagonists used to live. They've returned because their friends have gone missing there, and they need to find them and rescue them before it's too late.

The gameplay looks very similar to the Little Nightmares series, and is about as close as we're likely to get to a Little Nightmares 3 anytime soon - or at least until slightly later in the ONL show, when Little Nightmares 3 did actually make an appearance. As you might expect, the game features a full co-op campaign for anyone who can't bear to go into this spooky world alone.

What makes Reanimal so striking to me is the fact that Tarsier Studios has retained that sense of shocking body horror from its previous games, but moved into a new realm to keep the horror fresh. Making yet another game with Misshapen humans would still be scary, but we've seen it a few times already now.

Grotesque animals are unfamiliar, and that's what makes even the mere trailer for this game so horrifying in the best way possible. While we don't have a release date at the time of writing, this is a survival horror game worth wishlisting and waiting for.

The post Little Nightmares dev Tarsier Studios announces Reanimal, a terrifying new horror title appeared first on Destructoid.